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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.
K. Suematsu, M. Nishikawa, S. Fukada, T. Kinjyo, T. Koyama, N. Yamashita
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 54 | Number 2 | August 2008 | Pages 561-564
Technical Paper | Materials Interactions | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-A1878
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The authors have made a tritium release model to represent the release behavior of bred tritium from solid breeder materials using a series of studies.It has been observed that a large amount of adsorbed water and water produced by water formation reaction are released to the purge gas even though dry purge gas with hydrogen is introduced to solid breeder materials. According to our tritium release model, the presence of water in the purge gas and surface water on the material has a large effect on the tritium release behavior. In this study, the authors quantified the amount of adsorbed water and the capacity of the water formation reaction for various solid breeder materials (Li2TiO3, Li4SiO4, Li2ZrO3, LiAlO2). The effect of surface water on the chemical form of tritium released from the LiAlO2 blanket is also discussed in this study.
