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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.
Kazuhiro Kobayashi, Takumi Hayashi, Hirofumi Nakamura, Toshihiko Yamanishi, Yasuhisa Oya, Kenji Okuno
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 52 | Number 3 | October 2007 | Pages 696-700
Technical Paper | The Technology of Fusion Energy - Tritium, Safety, and Environment | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1571
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In a fusion reactor of high safety and acceptability, safe confinement of tritium is one of key issues for the fusion reactor. Tritium should be well-controlled and not excessively released to the environment and to prevent workers from excess exposure. Especially, the hot cell and tritium facilities of ITER will use various construction materials such as the organic materials. The hot cell is maintained in the dry atmosphere very much, and the maintenance of the apparatus contaminated by high concentration tritium is assumed. Therefore, the hot cell may be contaminated by high concentration tritium. Since the epoxy paint which will be used as a paint on the wall of the hot cell was contaminated by tritium compared with metal material, it is very important to study the efficient decontamination of the epoxy paint from a viewpoint of the protection the excess exposure of the workers. For tritium decontamination processes, so-called 'soaking' effect is important. This effect is based on sorption of tritiated water vapor on the materials and subsequent desorption from them. Therefore, in order to develop for the optimal decontamination technique, the decontamination experiment was carried out as a function of water vapor concentration in the purge gas (N2) for epoxy paint, acrylic resin and butyl rubber. As the result, the desorption rate for the organic materials was evaluated by purging gas of N2, and then furthermore, the residual tritium on the organic materials was quickly removed by adding water vapor in purging gas. The effect of adding water vapor was found on the decontamination for the organic materials.