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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.
M. Roedig, V. Barabash, R. Eaton, T. Hirai, I. Kupriyanov, J. Linke, X. Liu, A. Schmidt, Zh. Wang
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 62 | Number 1 | July-August 2012 | Pages 16-20
PFC and FW Materials Issues | Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Fusion Reactor Materials, Part A: Fusion Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A14105
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In order to qualify new beryllium grades for ITER, several Russian and Chinese materials were tested in the electron beam facility JUDITH-1 and compared to the reference material S65C. In a former campaign, samples from these materials were loaded in thermal shock experiments with single shots and multiple shots. The present work is an extension of this work to other loading scenarios.Four actively cooled mock-ups were produced in Russia and in China (two by each party). These mock-ups consisted of a water-cooled CuCrZr body with four tiles from different beryllium grades. Both parties used their own joining techniques, but each of the mock-ups also contained beryllium tiles from the other party, as well as from S65C.Each tile was loaded by the following scenarios on different surface areas:• simulation of vertical displacement events (VDEs) at 40 MJ/m2, 1 shot, heated area a = 10 × 10 mm2, 50-ms ramp-up, 165-ms steady state• disruption simulation at 3 MJ/m2, 1 shot, heated area a = 5 × 5 mm2, t = 5 ms• repetitive test with 1000 shots at 80 MW/m2 (2 MJ/m2), a = 10 × 10 mm2, t = 25 ms. This loading condition is similar to one that was proposed by Sandia National Laboratory for the comparison of different beryllium grades.Finally, one mock-up by each party underwent a thermal fatigue test with 1000 cycles at 2 MW/m2, 15 s heating, and 15 s cooling (heated area: whole sample surface). Heavy melting was observed in the area of the VDE loading, but no detachment of any of the tiles was found. Following the high-heat-flux experiments in the electron beam facility, post-mortem examinations were performed by optical photography and scanning electron microscopy on the surfaces as well as by metallography. From these analyses, no fundamental differences were found for the damage in the different beryllium grades.