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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. Mayoral, J. Sanz, D. López, R. Vila
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 62 | Number 1 | July-August 2012 | Pages 276-282
Fusion Technology Facilities | Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Fusion Reactor Materials, Part A: Fusion Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A14147
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Spanish Technofusion project includes an irradiation laboratory equipped with two tandem-type accelerators (protons/deuterons and alphas) and a multi-ion cyclotron (heavy ions).A radioprotection issue concerning activation of the irradiated samples is to establish the required "cooling" waiting period for safe handling. Samples of iron, Al2O3, SiO2, and SiC are considered here.In dealing with this task, inventory calculations have been performed using, in addition to cross-section data available in different activation libraries, experimental data for some dominant reactions that have not yet been considered in the generation of the corresponding evaluated activation cross sections. Residual dose rate results, calculated from the radioactive inventory determined using both evaluated data alone and a combination of evaluated and experimental data, are compared and the impact of the results on handling limitations analyzed.Very affordable cooling times are found suitable for the irradiated samples. The calculated cooling times meeting safe handling requirements are expected to have high reliability for the proton beam in Al2O3 and the alpha beam in Fe and relatively high reliability for the proton beam in SiO2 and Fe as well as the alpha beam in Al2O3 and SiO2; only deuteron beam is satisfactory for Al2O3; and finally, for SiC, all cases are unsatisfactory.
