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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.
Hilary Phillips, Edwin Privas, Julian Dean
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 67 | Number 3 | April 2015 | Pages 523-526
Proceedings of TRITIUM 2013 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-T70
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nuclear plant operators (power generation, decommissioning and reprocessing operations) are required to monitor releases of tritium species for regulatory compliance and radiation protection purposes. Tritium monitoring is performed using tritium-in-air gas monitoring instrumentation based either on flow-through ion chambers or proportional counting systems. Tritium-in-air monitors are typically calibrated in dry conditions but in service may operate at elevated levels of relative humidity. The NPL radioactive gas-in-air calibration system has been used to study the effect of humidity on the response to tritium of two tritium-in-air ion chamber based monitors and one proportional counting system which uses a P10/air gas mixture. The response of these instruments to HTO vapour has also been evaluated. In each case, instrument responses were obtained for HT in dry conditions (RH ~2%), HT in 45% Relative Humidity (RH), and finally HTO at 45% RH. Instrumentation response to HT in humid conditions has been found to slightly exceed that in dry conditions.
