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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.
R.M. Brown, G.L. Ogram, F.S. Spencer
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 14 | Number 2 | September 1988 | Pages 1165-1169
Tritium Release Experiment | doi.org/10.13182/FST88-A25296
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A release of 3.54 TBq of HT was conducted over an experimental field at Chalk River consisting of a 200 m diameter grassland and a further 200 m stretch of coarse sand having sparse vegetation. Tritiated hydrogen was released at a steady rate over a 30 minute period. Atmospheric sampling for HTO and HT was done using molecular sieve and Pd-loaded molecular sieve traps. HTO/HT ratios observed during the release ranged from 1.37×10−5 at 5 m to 7.0×10−4 at 400 m distance from the release point indicating an effective oxidation rate of about 1.5%/h, confirming results obtained in a preliminary experiment in 1986. Oxidation truly in the atmosphere must be much slower than this effective rate since HTO observed in the plume could be attributed primarily to evaporation of tritium oxidized in the surface soil of the field. The distribution of HT in the plume was similar in trend to that calculated from the Gaussian Plume Model but observed concentrations were about one half of the calculated values.