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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. Muroga, D. Zhang, T. Tanaka
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 64 | Number 2 | August 2013 | Pages 211-215
Materials Development | Proceedings of the Twentieth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE-2012) (Part 1), Nashville, Tennessee, August 27-31, 2012 | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-A18078
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Previous studies by the authors showed that hydrogen permeation reduction factor (PRF) of Er2O3 coating on ferritic steels by Metal Organic Decomposition (MOD) depends on the Cr level of the substrate steels and the annealing conditions. The reason of the dependence was attributed to the composition of the oxide layer formed beneath the coating. The PRF was shown to be larger when Cr2O3 layer was formed than when Fe2O3 layer was formed. This paper reports further investigation of the effect of temperature and oxygen partial pressure of the annealing on the composition of the oxide layer. A diffusion modeling of Cr and O was performed to account for the experimental data. The results showed that the data can be well explained assuming that Cr2O3 layer is formed when supply of Cr exceeds that of O at the substrate surface.
