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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.
M.TÄSchner, B. Wiener, C. Bunnenberg
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 14 | Number 2 | September 1988 | Pages 1264-1269
Tritium Release Experiment | doi.org/10.13182/FST88-A25314
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
During two experimental field releases of tritiated hydrogen, performed in France and Canada, a series of measurements was carried out to trace the pathways of tritium in the environment. Information on plume dispersion, HT deposition and conversion into HTO in contact with soil was obtained from analyses of air and soil samples at different positions within the dispersion sector. It was found that HT dispersion can be properly described by the Gaussian plume model, when in the case of the extremely short release the small dispersion parameters of stable weather conditions are used, although the situation was unstable according to Pasquill's classification. HT deposition velocities evaluated from undisturbed and preconditioned field soils confirmed the laboratory findings that the combined process of deposition and biochemical conversion is correlated to the superposition of two countercurrent functions of the free pore volume: HT diffusion in soil on one hand and microbial action on the other hand.