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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.
Takumi Hayashi, Hirofumi Nakamura, Yoshinori Kawamura, Yasunori Iwai, Kanetsugu Isobe, Masayuki Yamada, Takumi Suzuki, Rie Kurata, Makoto Oyaizu, Yuki Edao, Toshihiko Yamanishib
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 67 | Number 2 | March 2015 | Pages 365-370
Proceedings of TRITIUM 2013 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-T31
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
JAEA has two tritium handling laboratories, such as Tritium Processing Laboratory (TPL) in Tokai and DEMO R&D building in Rokkasho. Specially, TPL has been accumulated a gram level tritium safety handling experiences without any accidental tritium release to the environment for more than 25years. At the Grate East Japan Earthquake 2011, TPL received many effects, such as building surface crack etc., however, tritium confinement function was successfully maintained with adequate safety interlock actions and almost all safety related effects will be recovered within March 2014. Recently, our activities have been focused to the 1) ITER Detritiation system R&D task; 2) DEMO R&D tasks in Broader Approach (BA) activities, such as a) tritium accountancy, b) tritium interactions with various materials, and c) tritium durability; and 3) Recovery works from the Grate East Japan Earthquake 2011.