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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.
Takuya Nagasaka, Takeo Muroga, Tomohito Iikubo
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 44 | Number 2 | September 2003 | Pages 465-469
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Fusion Materials | doi.org/10.13182/FST03-A379
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The tubing processes for high-purity low-activation V-4Cr-4Ti alloys were developed. From examination on the fabrication process parameters, suitable annealing condition prior to the 3-directional rolling, intermediate annealing condition, and limit for reduction of area for 1 pass at the rolling, were obtained. From microstructural observations, cracks induced during the 3-directional rolling can be attributed to the banding structure of Ti precipitates. Resulting tubes were evaluated by impurity tracing, ultrasonic inspection, eddy current testing, measurements on grain size after recrystallization and tensile tests. Grain size of the tubes after recrystallization was larger than that of the plate with the same thickness at an annealing temperature of 1273 K. At lower annealing temperature, the difference was small, however. Carbon and oxygen contaminations of about 60 and 200 wppm at the maximum, repectively, and defects on the tube wall surface were detected. They can be improved by minor change in the current process. The contamination increased tensile strength, whereas the surface defects smaller than 20 m did not induce significant degradation of tensile properties. The examination of fabrication process parameters and evaluation of the resulting tubes successfully demonstrated the feasibility of vanadium alloys for component materials for fusion reactors.