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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.
A. Widdowson et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 54 | Number 1 | July 2008 | Pages 51-54
Technical Paper | Iter and Fusion | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-A1763
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The retention of tritium (T) by carbon based deposits on tokamak surfaces is of increasing concern to the fusion community as the scale of tritium retention by this mechanism could be a limiting factor for the operation of fusion reactors, such as ITER. Hence there is a need to investigate ways of mitigating T retention and also for detritiating surfaces by either desorption of T or removal of tritiated deposits. The results of the removal of codeposits from CFC tiles by pulsed laser ablation are reported here. The results show that it is possible to completely remove a 300m thick hydrogen isotope rich carbon film at a rate of 12x10-3m2/hr by this method and that with optimisation of the laser parameters there is scope to improve the treatment rates to provide a useful tool for managing T inventory in tokamaks.
