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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.
Robert T. Bush
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 19 | Number 2 | March 1991 | Pages 313-356
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST91-A29367
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The transmission resonance model (TRM) is combined with some electrochemistry of the cathode surface and found to provide a good fit to new data on excess heat. For the first time, a model for cold fusion not only fits calorimetric data but also predicts optimal trigger points. This suggests that the model is meaningful and that the excess heat phenomenon claimed by Fleischmann and Pons is genuine. A crucial role is suggested for the overpotential and, in particular, for the concentration overpotential, i.e., the hydrogen overvoltage. Self-similar geometry, or scale invariance, i.e., a fractal nature, is revealed by the relative excess power function. Heat bursts are predicted with a scale invariance in time, suggesting a possible link between the TRM and chaos theory. The model describes a near-surface phenomenon with an estimated excess power yield of ∼1 kW/cm3 Pd, as compared to 50 W/cm3 of reactor core for a good fission reactor. Transmission resonance-induced nuclear transmutation, a new type of nuclear reaction, is strongly suggested with two types emphasized: transmission resonance-induced neutron transfer reactions yielding essentially the same end result as Teller's hypothesized catalytic neutron transfer and a three-body reaction promoted by standing de Broglie waves. The cross section σ for the nuclear reaction that is the ultimate source of the excess heat is estimated to satisfy 10−28 cm2 ≲ σ ≲ 10−18 cm2. Suggestions for the anomalous production of heat, particles, and radiation are given. A polarization conjecture leads to a derivation of a branching ratio of 1.64 × 10−9 for the deuterium-deuterium reaction in electrolytic cold fusion in favor of tritium over neutrons. The model may account for the Bockris curve, in which a lower level production of tritium mirrors that of excess heat. Heat production without tritium is also accounted for, as well as the possibility of tritium production without heat. Thus, the TRM has a high probability for unifying most, if not all, of the seemingly anomalous effects associated with cold fusion.
