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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.
Hiroshi Takeda, Shoichi Fuma, Kiriko Miyamoto, Kei Yanagisawa, Nobuyoshi Ishii, Noriko Kuroda
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 41 | Number 3 | May 2002 | Pages 445-449
Biology | Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology Tsukuba, Japan November 12-16, 2001 | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A22629
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The purpose of the present study is to develop an accurate and practicable method to estimate an internal dose after exposure to tritium in various chemical forms. In rats exposed to tritiated water (HTO) or some tritiated organic compounds by single ingestion, the concentrations of total tritium and organically bound tritium (OBT) in blood and various organs were determined at various time intervals after ingestion. The concentrations of total tritium in blood showed a tendency to be higher than those in the majority of organs. When the cumulative doses to blood and organs for 100 days after ingestion of various tritiated compounds were compared, the doses to blood were almost the same or higher as compared with the maximum doses to organs. These results indicated that blood analyses would be useful to estimate a maximum of internal doses for exposure to tritium in various chemical forms. It was also suggested that the concentration ratio of OBT to total tritium in blood could be used to deduce the chemical form of tritium at exposure and the elapsed time after exposure.