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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.
L. Wu, G. H. Miley, H. Momota, P. J. Shrestha
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 52 | Number 4 | November 2007 | Pages 1096-1100
Technical Paper | Nonelectric Applications | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1643
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Homeland security has an urgent need for an advanced detecting system to accurately and quickly search for nuclear and explosive materials in a wide variety of situations. An integrated broad area coverage neutron/x-ray interrogation unit is proposed here to meet such needs. This system will use a unique cylindrical Inertial Electrostatic Confinement (IEC) device. This compact pulsed neutron/x-ray line source can produce ~2 × 1010 n/s 14.1-MeV D-T neutrons, ~108 n/s 2.45-MeV D-D neutrons and 80 kV x-rays.Unlike prior neutron activation systems, this unit can provide a long line-like emission source to obtain broad coverage, providing very fast scan time for even large objects. The use of combined multi-energy neutron and x-ray sources, along with a 3-D detector array and fuzzy logic analysis system, are expected to provide high elemental identification accuracy, greatly decreasing false signals so commonly encountered in prior systems. Analysis techniques will employ both thermal neutron analysis (TNA)and pulsed fast neutron analysis (PFNA), accompanied by broad area x-ray imaging techniques.
