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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. Ikeda, A. Kumar, C. Konno, K. Kosako, Y. Oyama, F. Maekawa, H. Maekawa, M. Z. Youssef, M. A. Abdou
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 28 | Number 1 | August 1995 | Pages 156-172
Technical Paper | Fusion Neutronics Integral Experiments — Part I / Blanket Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST95-A30404
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nuclear heat deposition rates in the structural components of a fusion reactor, have been measured directly with a microcalorimeter incorporated with an intense deuterium-tritium (D-T) neutron source, the Fusion Neutronics Source (FNS) at the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI), under the framework of the JAERI/U.S. Department of Energy (U.S. DOE) collaborative program on fusion neutronics. Structural materials of aluminum, titanium, iron, nickel, molybdenum, and Type 304 stainless steel, along with a ceramic of Li2CO3, have been studied with a small-size single probe configuration, subjecting them to D-T neutrons. Heat deposition rates at positions up to 200 mm of depth in a Type 304 stainless steel assembly bombarded with D-T neutrons were measured along with these single probe experiments. The measured heating rates were compared with comprehensive calculations in order to verify the adequacy of the currently available database relevant to the nuclear heating. In general, calculations with data of JENDL-3 and ENDL-85 libraries gave good agreement with experiments for all single probe materials, whereas RMCCS, based on ENDF/B-V, suffered from unreasonable overestimation in the heating number. For Li2CO3 with a low heat conduction coefficient, analysis was carried out by using a heat transfer calculation code ADINAT, coupled with the neutron and gamma-ray transport DOT3.5. It was demonstrated that the nuclear/thermal coupled calculation is a powerful tool to analyze the time-dependent temperature change due to the heat transfer in the probe materials. The analysis for the Type 304 stainless steel assembly, based on JENDL-3, demonstrated that the calculation, in general, was in good agreement with the measurement up to 200 mm of depth along the central axis of the assembly. The experimental approach demonstrated in this study clearly showed the feasibility of the calorimeter to measure the nuclear heating for the neutron field where the 14-MeV contribution is relatively small in comparison with the low-energy neutron contribution.
