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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.
Y. Oyama, S. Yamaguchi, K. Tsuda, C. Konno, Y. Ikeda, H. Maekawa, T. Nakamura, K. Porges, E. Bennett
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 19 | Number 3 | May 1991 | Pages 1955-1960
Neutronic | Proceedings of the Ninth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Oak Brook, Illinois, October 7-11, 1990) | doi.org/10.13182/FST91-A29628
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Two types of heterogeneous blanket systems were tested to estimate a design margin for neutronic calculations. One system simulates a multi-layered beryllium/lithium-oxide blanket, and the other does water coolant channels in a Li2O blanket. For both systems the tritium production rate (TPR), reaction rate and neutron spectrum were measured. Those measurements were performed by NE213 and Li-glass scintillators, Li-foil and Li2O zonal block scheme for TPR, activation foils for reaction rate and proton recoil proportional counters for spectrum. In addition, gamma-ray heating was measured by spectrum weighting function technique using NE213 scintillator. Precise distribution measurements near the material boundary were performed especially by directly stacking the irradiation samples in the test blanket region to minimize a perturbation for the measurement.
