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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.
G. D. Samolyuk, Y. N. Osetsky, R. E. Stoller
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 1 | January 2017 | Pages 52-59
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST16-118
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Tungsten and its alloys are the primary candidate materials for plasma-facing components in fusion reactors. The material is exposed to high-energy neutrons and the high flux of helium and hydrogen atoms. In this work we have studied the properties of vacancy clusters and their interaction with H and He in W using density functional theory. Convergence of calculations with respect to modeling cell size was investigated. It is demonstrated that vacancy cluster formation energy converges with small cells with a size of 6 × 6 × 6 (432 lattice sites) enough to consider a microvoid of up to six vacancies with high accuracy. Most of the vacancy clusters containing fewer than six vacancies are unstable. Introducing He or H atoms increases their binding energy potentially making gas-filled bubbles stable. According to the results of the calculations, the H2 molecule is unstable in clusters containing six or fewer vacancies.