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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.
A. Klix, Ch. Adelhelm, U. Fischer, D. Gehre, T. Kaiser
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 62 | Number 1 | July-August 2012 | Pages 196-203
Blanket Materials Technology | Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Fusion Reactor Materials, Part A: Fusion Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A14135
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A consortium of several European laboratories has performed neutronics experiments with a representative mock-up of the European helium-cooled lithium-lead (HCLL) test blanket module (TBM) irradiated with DT neutrons from intense neutron generators. The aim of these experiments was to provide experimental data for checking nuclear data and calculational tools for the prediction accuracy of important parameters such as the tritium production rate and neutron and gamma-ray flux spectra. The mock-up consisted of bricks of solid LiPb arranged in layers separated by Eurofer sheets. The 6Li concentration in the LiPb determines the slow neutron flux distribution in the mock-up, and an accurate knowledge of this value is of paramount importance for the analysis of these neutronics experiments. The analysis of the tritium production rate experiments revealed discrepancies between the real 6Li concentration and the one specified by the manufacturer of the LiPb (natural Li composition). Here we report on the investigation of the 6Li concentration in the LiPb with several experimental techniques: 1) time-of-arrival neutron spectra measured inside the mock-up irradiated with short pulses of 14-MeV neutrons from a DT neutron generator, 2) transmission measurements on LiPb bricks with moderated neutrons from an AmBe source to check for differences between bricks, and 3) mass spectroscopic methods on small samples taken from selected LiPb bricks. We found that the 6Li concentration varies only very little between the bricks. The weight fraction of lithium in the LiPb was 0.61 wt% as quoted by the manufacturer, but the 6Li abundance was half of the natural value in lithium, 3.8 at% instead of 7.5 at%.