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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.
D. Ducret, C. Laquerbe, A. Ballanger, J. Steimetz, V. Porri, J.P. Verdin, T. Pelletier
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 41 | Number 3 | May 2002 | Pages 1092-1096
Isotope Separation | Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology Tsukuba, Japan November 12-16, 2001 | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A22752
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The separation of hydrogen isotopes is an essential element for tritium processing systems. A new process invented at the Savannah River Site, has been developed at Valduc facility: Thermal Cycling Absorption Process. This system uses palladium packed in a column to absorb a stream of hydrogen isotopes. By repeated heating and cooling cycles, the hydrogen isotopes successively desorb into a capacity and go back onto the column. The thermal cycling creates differences in the Pd separation factor for the hydrogen isotopes inducing the concentration of tritium at one end of the column and the concentration of the lighter isotopes at the other end. This paper presents experimental results obtained with a full-scale facility which has been installed in a glovebox so as to treat weakly tritiated gases. Experimental data collected on this device working with several isotopic mixtures are presented and compared to simulation results.
