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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.
R. Pampin
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 50 | Number 4 | November 2006 | Pages 528-537
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1276
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Lithium-lead is a candidate tritium-generating material in conceptual designs of magnetic fusion power plants. Its prolonged utilization, ultimately during the entire lifetime of such a facility, has the potential to minimize amounts of active waste and improve the economic performance. Limits to a prolonged use are production of long-lived radioactive waste and depletion of lithium and reduction of the tritium production rate to levels where self-sufficiency is compromised. The methodology and calculations performed to estimate the transmutation of LiPb following its prolonged irradiation in two of the models in the European Power Plant Conceptual Study are presented. It is shown that no waste requiring permanent disposal is expected regardless of the irradiation length. Time-dependent tritium generation is discussed: Lithium replenishment seems unavoidable, but depletion rates are found to be lower than assumed in the design. The effect of the LiPb flow pattern in the irradiation history proves to be crucial in order to support these results.