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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.
Daniel López, Javier Sanz, Francisco Ogando
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 62 | Number 1 | July-August 2012 | Pages 252-257
IFMIF | Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Fusion Reactor Materials, Part A: Fusion Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A14143
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
During the IFMIF/EVEDA phase, a 125 mA and 9 MeV deuteron prototype accelerator will be designed and tested for the final IFMIF project. Deuteron losses will occur during operation of the accelerator at several components as well as at the beam stopping, leading to material activation induced by deuterons and/or by secondary neutrons, depending on the location. This work is focused on the residual dose rate assessment inside the accelerator vault due to the radioactive inventory induced in the main accelerator components, the outside concrete structures of the accelerator vault, and the concrete-made local shielding of the beam dump. The results will be useful for maintenance work planning, identifying hot areas in the accelerator region. The adopted computational procedure uses MCUNED for determination of spatial distribution of deuteron and neutron fluxes, ACAB for activation calculations, and MCNPX for transport of decay gammas. Deuteron transport cross sections are taken from TENDL-2010 and decay and activation cross-section data from EAF-2007.