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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.
Yasunori Iwai, Masayuki Uzawa, Toshihiko Yamanishi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 54 | Number 2 | August 2008 | Pages 462-465
Technical Paper | Water Processing | doi.org/10.13182/FST54-462
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Several types of adsorbers have been studied as they are considered for the first stage of water detritiation systems processing more than 100kg/h of high-level tritiated water generated in a future fusion plant. Zeolite is a suitable adsorbent since it is an inorganic material having a large water capacity. Rapid dehydration characteristics as well as a large HTO/H2O separation factor is necessary for the adsorber to minimize its size. Present experiments were focused on the effect of cations on HTO / H2O separation and dehydration characteristics of Y-type zeolites. The selected cations are Na, K and Ca. The flamework SiO2/Al2O3 ratio of the zeolites is fixed to 5.0 in the present experiments. It was found that the isotope separation factors are around 1.1-1.2 under static conditions. As for dehydration, operating temperature fixes the capacity of movable water from the zeolites. The capacity at room temperature is NaY > CaY > KY. HTO dehydration characteristics depend on the accumulated purge gas amount, while the purge gas rate is less influential. Effect of temperature on HTO dehydration is also less influential especially in the early stage of dehydration. Pressure swing is an effective method for HTO dehydration.
