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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.
Edward I. Moses
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 54 | Number 2 | August 2008 | Pages 361-366
Technical Paper | Tritium and Inertial Fusion | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-A1831
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will be the world's largest and most powerful laser system for inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and experiments studying high energy density (HED) science. NIF is a 192 beam Ndglass laser facility that will produce 1.8 MJ, 500 TW of ultraviolet light making it over fifty times more energetic than present ICF facilities. The NIF Project began in 1995 and is scheduled for completion in 2009. Ignition experiments on NIF, which will use tritium, are scheduled to begin in 2010. Tritium will arrive at the facility in individual target assemblies. The assemblies will be mounted to the Cryogenic TARget POSitioner (TARPOS), which provides the cryogenic cooling systems necessary to complete the formation of the ignition target's fuel ice layer. It also provides the positioning system that transports and holds the target at the center of the NIF chamber during a shot. After a shot, unburned tritium will be captured by the cryopumps. Upon regeneration, the cryopump effluent will be directed to the Tritium Processing System, part of NIF's. Personnel and Environmental Protection Systems. These systems also include, local contamination control systems, area and stack tritium monitoring systems, a decontamination area, and waste packaging and characterization capability. This equipment will be used along with standard contamination control practices to manage the tritium hazard to workers and to limit releases to the environment to negligibly small amounts.