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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.
L. C Cadwallader, M. A. Stolpe Gavett, L. Quintana
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 21 | Number 2 | March 1992 | Pages 518-522
Safety; Measurement and Accountability; Operation and Maintenance; Application | doi.org/10.13182/FST92-A29799
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Fusion facility safety and reliability/availability analyses require accurate component failure rate information to provide meaningful results. While fission reactor operating experience data may be adequate for some types of components, there are some data needs that are fusion-specific, such as tritium fueling and handling system information. This paper summarizes the results of a failure data analysis task on several components at Los Alamos National Laboratory's Tritium Systems Test Assembly (TSTA). We took the failure reports and component operating information from the TSTA Failure/Maintenance Data Base. Calculated failure rates are on the same order of magnitude as screening fusion failure rate data, although a few failure rates were slightly higher. These new data should be of interest to fusion safety analysts and tritium systems designers.