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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.
G. C. Abell, A. Attalla
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 14 | Number 2 | September 1988 | Pages 643-648
Tritium Properties and Interactions with Material | Proceedings of the Third Topical Meeting on Tritium Technology in Fission, Fusion and Isotopic Applications (Toronto, Ontario, Canada, May 1-6, 1988) | doi.org/10.13182/FST88-A25207
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) studies of aging phenomena in palladium tritide. 3He NMR relaxation parameters have been measured as a function of temperature for 6-, 13-, and 22-month-old beta phase palladium tritide. The most significant result of this study is the observation of a solid/fluid phase transition near 250 K of 3He that has accumulated in the PdTx substrate via triton decay. Although the existence of solid helium at relatively high temperatures had been predicted for helium in metals, it had not previously been confirmed in any metal/helium system. The observed melting temperatures, together with the known equation of state for 4He, allow a determination of the helium density as a function of age. The atomic density obtained in this way is approximately 2.0 times that of palladium metal, agreeing with densities inferred from dilatometric measurements of other metal tritides and also with predictions based on the concept of dislocation loop punching by highly overpressurized He bubbles. The 3He signal in the 22-month-old sample was sufficiently strong to allow a detailed study of melting as a function of temperature, and provides information on the distribution of densities over the ensemble of bubbles.