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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.
Francesco Ghezzi, Walter T. Shmayda, Giovanni Bonizzoni
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 31 | Number 1 | January 1997 | Pages 75-105
Technical Paper | Tritium System | doi.org/10.13182/FST97-A30781
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Tritium gas handling involves the production of tritiated water, which is 10000 times more hazardous than tritium gas. If tritium emission to the environment must be minimized, the need to process tritiated water and recover the chemically bound tritium appears clear. Facilities for processing tritiated water produced in fission reactors are already available, while facilities for a deuterium-tritium fusion machine are under development. However, these facilities are intended for large-scale applications and are neither practical nor economical for small-scale applications. HTO vapor reduction to HT over a hot metal getter other than uranium offers a simple, safe, and economical solution. A high alloy capacity and conversion rate combined with a low tritium residual inventory in the exhausted alloy make this method attractive. An experimental investigation of the efficiency of reducing HTO by a Zr-Fe-Mn alloy is presented. The results, obtained by three independent diagnostics (stripper set, ionization chambers, and mass spectrometry), show that for gas residence times >1 s and alloy temperatures >400°C, a conversion efficiency exceeding 90% is achievable. Specific conversion rates >0.1 μmol/s·g−1 are observed during the alloy usage, while a capacity of the alloy, measured as an oxygen-to-alloy mole ratio, >2.6 has been measured.