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Colin Judge: Testing structural materials in Idaho’s newest hot cell facility
Idaho National Laboratory’s newest facility—the Sample Preparation Laboratory (SPL)—sits across the road from the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF), which started operating in 1975. SPL will host the first new hot cells at INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) in 50 years, giving INL researchers and partners new flexibility to test the structural properties of irradiated materials fresh from the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) or from a partner’s facility.
Materials meant to withstand extreme conditions in fission or fusion power plants must be tested under similar conditions and pushed past their breaking points so performance and limitations can be understood and improved. Once irradiated, materials samples can be cut down to size in SPL and packaged for testing in other facilities at INL or other national laboratories, commercial labs, or universities. But they can also be subjected to extreme thermal or corrosive conditions and mechanical testing right in SPL, explains Colin Judge, who, as INL’s division director for nuclear materials performance, oversees SPL and other facilities at the MFC.
SPL won’t go “hot” until January 2026, but Judge spoke with NN staff writer Susan Gallier about its capabilities as his team was moving instruments into the new facility.
V. Y. Korolevych, S. B. Kim
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 4 | November 2011 | Pages 1288-1291
Environmental and Organically Bound Tritium | Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12666
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This study is devoted to the collection and robust analysis of 2008-2009 field data pertaining to airborne tritium transfer in potato and tomato plants subject to continuous releases. The study is a part of implementation and validation of tritium transfer model ported to Canadian LAnd Surface Scheme (CLASS), which has been recently extended towards plant phenomenology in Canadian Terrestrial Ecosystem Model (CTEM+CLASS v.2.7). The initial validation has been performed for ratios of organic to free-water tritium in plant tissues (OBT/HTO ratios) retrieved from the simple off-line tritium uptake and re-emission routine assessed against historical OBT/HTO ratio datasets. The observed underestimate of high OBT/HTO ratios in this simple model warrants deployment of CTEM+CLASS and makes it necessary to focus the next experimental validation effort at tritium re-emission phase. The concentration of HTO in the upper soil layer, in the different parts of vegetation and in the air has been assessed. The sampling was performed on weekly and hourly scales, in the latter case with emphasis on a night-time period. The process of uptake from atmosphere has been clarified using plants grown on the clean tarp-covered soil at Acid Rain Site of Chalk River Laboratories (CRL), which dumped the root uptake pathway. The processes of root uptake and re-emission from plant were clarified at the irrigated Perch Lake site of CRL. Auxiliary environmental drivers and site-specific data were collected according to format of inputs and parameterization of CTEM+CLASS.