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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.
Yoshi Hirooka, Robert W. Conn, Monali J. Khandagle, Gaetan Chevalier, Toshiaki Sogabe, Teruo Matsuda, Hiroaki Ogura, Hirotaka Toyoda, Hideo Sugai
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 19 | Number 4 | July 1991 | Pages 2059-2069
Technical Paper | Carbon Material Special | doi.org/10.13182/FST91-A29340
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Newly developed bulk-boronized graphites and boronized carbon-carbon composites, with a total boron concentration ranging from 3 to 30 wt%, have been bombarded with steady-state deuterium plasmas at temperatures between 200 and 1600°C in the PISCES-B facility. The erosion yield of bulk-boronized graphite is smaller than that of pyrolytic graphite by a factor of 2 to 3 in regimes of chemical sputtering, physical sputtering, and radiation-enhanced sublimation (RES). Plasma bombardment at elevated temperatures does not noticeably alter the near-surface composition of bulk-boronized graphite. A chemical pinning effect of boron on the migration of interstitial carbon atoms is the key to the reduction of erosion due to RES. Post-bombardment thermal desorption spectroscopy indicates that bulk boronization enhances recombinative desorption of deuterium. The enhanced deuterium desorption is responsible for the suppressed chemical sputtering. Deuterium retention in bulk-boronized graphite at temperatures from room temperature to 800°C has been measured, and it is maximized at temperatures around 300°C. The maximized deuterium retention increases by a factor of 2 as the boron concentration changes from 0 to 90%.