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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.
S. Pelloni, E.T. Chenga)
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 8 | Number 1 | July 1985 | Pages 1063-1066
Fusion Breeder | Proceedings of the Sixth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (San Francisco, California, March 3-7, 1985) | doi.org/10.13182/FST85-A39913
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The LOTUS Swiss fusion fission hybrid test facility was used to investigate the influence of the self-shielding of resonance cross sections on the tritium breeding and on the thorium ratios. Nucleonic analyses were performed using some deterministic codes and the Monte Carlo method. It is shown that the self-shielding of resonance cross sections results in a decrease of the thorium capture rate and in an increase of the tritium breeding of about 6 %. Therefore for hybrid blanket calculations it is important to define an adequate energy group structure with many groups within the resonances of the fissile-fertile material and the self-shielding should be included in neutronics calculations.
