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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.
Kenzo Munakata, Satoshi Yamatsuki, Yoshihiro Yokoyama, Seigo Kanjo, Dmitri Ianovski, Yamato Asakura, Tatsuhiko Uda
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 41 | Number 3 | May 2002 | Pages 1059-1063
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-A22746
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Catalytic oxidation and adsorption is conventional and reliable method for the detritiation of air in the working area of fusion power plants. Most commercial catalysts widely used for oxidation are fabricated using alumina substrates. However, in terms of the adsorption for tritiated water vapors, zeolites could have better performance. Thus, the authors conducted test fabrication of noble metal catalysts of which substrates are A-type zeolites and examined their catalytic performance for the oxidation of hydrogen and methane. The results indicate that these newly developed catalysts have excellent catalytic activity for the oxidation of hydrogen and their performance exceeds or is comparable to that of commercial Pd/alumina catalysts. Furthermore, it was also found that these catalysts have lower catalytic activity for the oxidation of methane compared with the commercial Pd/alumina catalysts. This result reveals a possibility that these catalysts can be utilized for the selective oxidation of molecular tritium and tritiated methane, which could be useful for monitoring of environmental tritium.