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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.
R.W. Kincaid, M.A. Bourham
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 26 | Number 3 | November 1994 | Pages 637-641
Plasma Fueling and Fuel Cycle | Proceedings of the Eleventh Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy New Orleans, Louisiana June 19-23, 1994 | doi.org/10.13182/FST94-A40228
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The NCSU electrothermal plasma gun SIRENS has been used to accelerate plastic (Lexan polycarbonate) pellets, to determine the feasibility of the use of electrothermal guns as pellet injectors. The use of an electrothermal gun to inject frozen hydrogenic pellets requires a mechanism to provide protective shells (sabots) for shielding the pellet from ablation during acceleration into and through the barrel of the gun. The gun has been modified to accommodate acceleration of the plastic pellets using special acceleration barrels equipped with diagnostics for velocity and position of the pellet, and targets to absorb the pellet's energy on impact. The length of the acceleration path could be varied between 15 and 45 cm. The discharge energy of the electrothermal gun ranged from 2 to 6 kJ. The pellet velocities have been measured via a set of break wires. Pellet masses were varied between 0.5 and 1.0 grams. Preliminary results on 0.5 and 1.0 g pellets show that the exit velocity reaches 0.9 km/s at 6 kJ input energy to the source. Higher velocities of 1.5 and 2.7 km/s have been achieved using 0.5 and 1.0 gm pellets in 30 cm long barrel, without cleaning the barrel between the shots.
