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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.
T. Itoh, T. Hayashi, K. Isobe, K. Kobayashi, T. Yamanishi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 52 | Number 3 | October 2007 | Pages 701-705
Technical Paper | The Technology of Fusion Energy - Tritium, Safety, and Environment | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1572
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In order to handle high-level tritiated water (HTO) safely, the self-decomposition behavior has been investigated as functions of tritium concentration (from 16 GBq/cm3 to 2 TBq/cm3) and storage temperature (269K ~ 303K). The representative decomposition products such as H2 in the gas phase and H2O2 in the liquid phase were measured periodically, storing HTO in a leak-tight vessel. The effective production rate of H2 increased with tritium concentration, however, the normalized production rate by tritium decay, like effective G-value, decreased with tritium concentration. The effective production rate of H2O2 also increased with tritium concentration and the normalized one also decreased under consideration of its natural decomposition rate, though it thought that the almost H2O2 calculated by the reported G-value decomposed by extra stimulus in tritiated water. The effective production rates of H2 and H2O2 increased with temperature.