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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.
Akihiro Suzuki, Juro Yagi, Masaru Nagura, Daisuke Komiyama, Takayuki Terai
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 62 | Number 1 | July-August 2012 | Pages 295-299
Fusion Technology Facilities | Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Fusion Reactor Materials, Part A: Fusion Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A14150
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A PbLi thermal convection loop with the flow rate of a few centimeters per second was designed and constructed to perform an in-situ tritium release experiment in a neutron source of the YAYOI reactor of The University of Tokyo. Tritium was generated by the nuclear reaction of Li with neutrons released through a 1-mm-thick steel tube and followed the reactor power with some time lag, which was affected by the hydrogen concentration in the sweep gas. The overall permeation rate coefficients, around 10-5 m/s, were almost the same as those acquired in former works performed in static tests. Formation or reduction of a surface oxide layer on the permeation tube would affect the tritium release behavior.
