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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.
A.R. Raffray, Z.R. Gorbis, M.A. Abdou
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 19 | Number 3 | May 1991 | Pages 1525-1531
ITER | Proceedings of the Ninth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Oak Brook, Illinois, October 7-11, 1990) | doi.org/10.13182/FST91-A29558
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Several transport mechanisms are involved in tritium transport in solid breeders—diffusion in the grain, diffusion along grain boundary, bulk adsorption on the grain boundary/pore interface, desorption to the pores, diffusion along interconnected porosities and convection by the purge flow. It is generally thought that two of the most rate controlling mechanisms are diffusion in the grain and desorption at the grain boundary/pore interface. However, depending on the breeder microstructure, diffusion through the pore can also significantly affect the overall tritium transport process. These three mechanisms are considered here, and the key parameters affecting the tritium transport rate by each mechanism are characterized. Grain diffusion and desorption are first compared, and multi-parameter plots showing regions of diffusion and desorption controls are derived for cases of purge flow with and without hydrogen addition. Grain diffusion is then compared to pore diffusion and the effect of the solid breeder microstructure on the pore diffusion coefficient is discussed. Finally, the resulting equations and plots are applied to experimental data from the LISA1 and TRIO experiments to evaluate the rate-controlling mechanisms.