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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.
N.Nakashima, S.Beloglazov, K.Hashimoto, M.Nishikawa
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 41 | Number 3 | May 2002 | Pages 1044-1048
Blanket Material and Process | Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology Tsukuba, Japan November 12-16, 2001 | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A22743
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Though litium ceramic materials such as Li2O, LiA1O2, Li2ZrO3, Li4SiO4, and Li2TiO3, are considered as the candidates for breeding materials in the blanket of a D-T fusion reactor, the release behavior of the bred tritium in these solid breeder materials has not been fully understood yet. We have pointed out that it is essential to understand such mass transfer steps as diffusion of tritium in the grain, absorption of water in the bulk of grain, and adsorption of water on the surface of grain, together with two types of isotope exchange reactions for estimation of the tritium inventory in a uniform solid breeder blanket under the steady-state condition. The rate of isotope exchange reaction-1 on Li2TiO3 is quantified in this study, where pebbles of Li2TiO3 from CEA, KHI, and NFI are used.It is observed in this study that the rate of isotope exchange reaction on Li2TiO3 becomes 2∼3 order smaller than other solid breeder materials when it is placed in the hydrogen atmosphere at high temperature. It is also observed that the color of Li2TiO3 changed to black in accordance with decrease of reaction rate.The observation obtained at the release experiment of bred tritium performed in Kyoto University Reactor that chemical form of tritium becomes HTO at the high temperature even when hydrogen of 100 Pa is added to the purge gas can be explained by decrease of isotope exchange reaction rate.Tritium inventory in the Li2TiO3 blanket in various conditions are also discussed in this paper.
