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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.
Masayuki Yamada, Toshihiko Yamanishi, Wataru Shu, Takumi Suzuki, Hirofumi Nakamura, Yoshinori Kawamura, Yasunori Iwai, Kazuhiro Kobayashi, Kanetsugu Isobe, Masataka Nishi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 41 | Number 3 | May 2002 | Pages 593-597
Device, Facility, and Operation | Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology Tsukuba, Japan November 12-16, 2001 | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A22657
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The TPL (Tritium Process Laboratory) at the JAERI (Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute) has been the only facility using over 1 gram of tritium for the fusion research in Japan. The construction of the building and the safety systems was completed until 1985. The operations of the safety systems with tritium have been started from March 1988. The amount of tritium held at the TPL was 19.1 PBq at March 2001. The average tritium concentration in a stream from a stack of the TPL to environment was 2.3x10−5Bq/cm3; and is 1/200 smaller than that of the regulation value for the concentration of HTO in the air. A record for the safety operation of tritium has thus been accumulated. The failure data of several main components of the TPL was also obtained giving valuable data of the tritium operation experience.