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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.
E. M. Fearon, R. T. Tsugawa, P. C. Souers, J. D. Polla, J. L. Hunta
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 8 | Number 2 | September 1985 | Pages 2239-2244
Research and Development | Proceedings of the Second National Topical Meeting on Tritium Technology in Fission, Fusion and Isotopic Applications (Dayton, Ohio, April 30 to May 2, 1985) | doi.org/10.13182/FST85-A24615
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An ultraviolet absorption feature has been seen in solid deuterium-tritium and hydrogen-tritium at a sensor temperature of 5 K. The peak occurs at 3.6 eV and is about 1.5 eV wide. It disappears when the temperature is raised to about 10 K but reappears upon cooling and is, therefore, radiation induced. At 5 K, the absorption line forms on a time scale of minutes and appears to represent part-per-million levels of electron-mass defects. The suggested model is that of a trapped electron, where the absorption line is the ground state-to-the-conduction band transition. A marked isotope effect is seen between D-T and H-T.
