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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.
G. C. Staack, J. E. Klein
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 4 | November 2011 | Pages 1479-1482
Interaction with Materials | Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-T17
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Absorption isotherm data exists for a wide variety of hydrogen-metal systems. When working with high purity gases, appropriately sized equipment, and hydrides with equilibrium pressures above several hundred Pa, data collection is relatively straightforward. Special consideration must be given to experiments involving low equilibrium pressure hydrides, as even sub-ppm levels of gas impurities can generate partial pressures many times greater than the equilibrium pressures to be measured. Tritium absorption experiments are further complicated by the continuous generation of helium-3. The time required to transfer and absorb a known quantity of tritium onto a sample ultimately limits the minimum pressure range that can be studied using the standard technique. Equations are presented which show the pressure of helium-3 in a sample cell based on the amount of tritium to be absorbed, the sample cell volume and temperature, and the decay time of tritium. Sample calculations for zirconium show that at 300°C, the estimated helium-3 pressure in the cell will be equal to the hydrogen absorption pressure after only milliseconds of tritium decay. An alternate method is presented that permits the collection of equilibrium data at pressures orders of magnitude lower than possible using a direct approach.