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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.
Robert C. Cook
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 51 | Number 4 | May 2007 | Pages 559-563
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1444
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this paper we show that the ambient temperature measured leakage time constant, RT, is related to the leakage at cryogenic temperature, RC, byRC = 0.23DTVsh/RTwhere DT is the density of cryogenic DT vapor, and Vsh is the internal volume of the shell. We then calculate the size of voids that may result from leakage at the Be/DT interface, depending upon the number of leakage sites and RT. Even for the slowest leakers the potential void growth is excessive. Reasons that voids have not been seen in DT layering experiments to date include the lack of a technique to see isolated micronish bubbles, however possible mechanisms preventing void formation are also discussed.
