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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.
Meimei Li, James F. Stubbins
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 44 | Number 1 | July 2003 | Pages 186-190
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Fusion Materials | doi.org/10.13182/FST03-A331
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The influence of radiation damage on the fatigue performance of two selected copper alloys, a dispersion-strengthened CuAl-25 alloy and a precipitation-hardened CuCrZr alloy, was analyzed. The fatigue lives of the two alloys were predicted using their tensile properties before and after irradiation by the Universal Slopes method. The predicted lives are compared with experimental results, and the feasibility of using tensile properties to predict fatigue lives following irradiation is examined. The fatigue performance of these two copper alloys was degraded due to radiation exposure, but the radiation effect on the fatigue performance was not as severe as on the tensile properties. The life prediction agrees reasonably well with the measured fatigue response.
