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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.
Jacob Jorné
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 29 | Number 1 | January 1996 | Pages 83-90
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactions in Solid | doi.org/10.13182/FST96-A30658
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Ultrasonic irradiation of a slurry of deuterium-loaded palladium powder (1 µm) suspended in heavy water causes cavitation and high-speed collisions between the palladium particles. High local temperatures, estimated at above the melting point of palladium (1828 K), cause melting and interparticle fusion. The expectation that such collisions can induce high stresses within the palladium particles and lead to favorable conditions for nuclear cold fusion of the deuterium atoms within the palladium lattice is checked by measuring the neutron rates during ultrasonic irradiation. Several bursts of neutron counting are observed and can be accounted for as background anomalism, although the highest observed neutron rate is about four times the background and cannot be explained as background. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis of the deuterium-loaded palladium powders reveals that after ultrasonic irradiation in heavy water, the palladium powder becomes partially oxidized and undergoes some compositional changes.
