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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.
H. Y. Khater, M. E. Sawan
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 21 | Number 3 | May 1992 | Pages 2051-2055
Safety, Recycling, and Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/FST92-A30023
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Radioactivity induced in a typical fusion power reactor was calculated for all elements with atomic number Z ≤ 84 and for different irradiation times. It was shown that the shutdown activity varies widely with the duration of the irradiation time. In general, the activity induced by radionuclides with half-lives that are significantly longer than the period of irradiation increases with increasing the irradiation time. On the other hand, the level of activity generated by any radionuclide with a half-life which is significantly shorter than the reactor life-time reaches a peak early during irradiation and then may starts to drop to lower value before the end of irradiation. The severity of this peaking is determined by the destruction rate of the parent element. The activities generated by long-lived nuclides (important for waste management) in any fusion reactor with life time in the order of 30 years reach their peak values at end-of-life. In the mean time, using the activity and decay heat values generated by short and intermediate-lived radionuclides at the end of reactor life to represent the worst case values used in safety analyses related to a loss of coolant accident (LOCA) and accidental release of radioactive inventory might lead to a substantial underestimation of the results.