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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.
S. Ueda, K. Tatenuma, Y. Nanjou, M. Matsuyama, T. Itoh, K. Watanabe
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 41 | Number 3 | May 2002 | Pages 1146-1150
Isotope Separation | Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology Tsukuba, Japan November 12-16, 2001 | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A22763
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To improve the efficiency of gas chromatography for hydrogen isotope separation near room temperature, feasibility of new columns was examined for H-D and H-D-T mixture gases. One kind of the column was the mixture of Pd-Pt alloy and Cu powders as the previous study. But special attention was paid for preparing the separation column; Pd-Pt alloy particles below 200 mesh was mixed with copper powder of 150–200 mesh and packed into a loading tube of stainless steel as uniform as possible. The separation for H-D mixture gases could be remarkably improved by this column even at temperatures around 300 K. This column also could separate tritium as T2 from H-D-T mixture gas containing only 0.13 % T. The other column was prepared by Pd-Pt alloy supported by porous SiC powder for economical use of the expensive alloy. Although this column gave similar separation chromatograms, the separation efficiency was still insufficient and further studies are required.