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Latest News
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.
Kitabata, Takuya
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 41 | Number 3 | May 2002 | Pages 356-360
Plenary | Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology Tsukuba, Japan November 12-16, 2001 | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A22611
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Two heavy water upgraders have been developed and operated in the Fugen Nuclear Power Station to keep the isotopic purity of the moderator around 99.7 wt% and to recover tritium from the degraded heavy water. One of the upgraders is a combined electrolysis catalyst exchange (CECE) process that consists of 90 stages of catalytic water-hydrogen isotopic separation units. This upgrader treats 10 m3/y of degraded heavy water, produces reactor grade heavy water, and lowers the tritium and heavy water in the waste to <3700 Bq/cm3 and <0.1wt%, respectively. The other one is simple electrolysis system and terminated its operation in 1999. Heavy water recycle is completed with these two upgraders in the Fugen. A filter-separation-type tritium monitor was developed. Daughter species of Rn-Tn are separated from sampled gas with hollow fiber filters made of perfluorosulfuric-acid resin before introducing to an ionization chamber. The detection limit of the monitor is 7.4E-03 Bq/cm3-air. The upgraders and monitor contributed to control airborne and liquid tritium releases from the Fugen lower than 18 TBq/y and 11 TBq/y, respectively.
