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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.
M. Shim, H. Chung, S. Cho, H. Yoshida
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 53 | Number 3 | April 2008 | Pages 830-840
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-26
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Quantitative assessment of a disproportionation in the ZrCo-hydrogen system under ITER-relevant operating conditions was performed by means of experimental tests and a theoretical calculation. In the static temperature experiments with equilibrium hydrogen pressures, a 10% disproportionation of ZrCoHx (x = 2.0 and 2.5) was observed in 5.5 h at 415°C (~78 kPa), 9 h at 400°C (~72 kPa), 172 h at 380°C (~51 kPa), and 1626 h at 350°C (~28 kPa). An experimental formula [log = 17 268/T (K) - 25.814, where is the reaction time (day) of 10% disproportionation] was derived from these experiments. Experiments with a temperature cycling of up to 125 cycles (from room temperature to 350 to 360°C) proved that no enhancement of a disproportionation occurs in the ZrCoHx (1.7 < x 2.0). Typical operation conditions of the ZrCo hydride bed for the D-T gas storage delivery system were proposed based on the ITER FDR 2000 plasma operation scenarios. The disproportionation rate estimated conservatively by the theoretical model indicates that a disproportionation in the ITER basic performance phase can be reduced by <4% even when there is a direct supply from the fuel storage and delivery system beds for all the D-T pulses and by <0.1% when the supply is from the hydrogen isotope separation system.