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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.
Sandro Sandri, Dan Gabriel Cepraga, Sergio Ciattaglia, Gilio Cambi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 26 | Number 3 | November 1994 | Pages 978-982
Tritium Technology, Safety, Environment, and Remote Maintenance | Proceedings of the Eleventh Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy New Orleans, Louisiana June 19-23, 1994 | doi.org/10.13182/FST94-A40281
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this paper a preliminary evaluation of the Occupational Radiation Exposure (ORE) of the personnel involved in working activities on sections of the ITER primary cooling systems (PCS) is presented. The analysis has been restricted to the primary cooling circuits of the first wall (FW) and of the shielding blanket (SB). The radioisotopes produced by activation in the pipe's material surfaces are identified using the available works and data, their amount is obtained with suitable computer codes. The calculation is performed using the combination of a 1-D discrete ordinate code and activation codes. The corrosion/erosion problem is faced with two different approaches: a simplified model with steady state conditions and a computer code that evaluates the non-homogeneous distribution of the activated corrosion products (ACP) in the cooling circuit. The ORE is assessed for some working activities considering the direct irradiation from the ACP and the average distance of the workers from the cooling circuit. The results presented in the paper are useful in order to address experiments needed to evaluate the main unknown parameters for the ACP evaluation and then to design the primary cooling circuits. Furthermore the work outlines a methodological procedure and presents some preliminary results for the ORE assessment at the PCS of a fusion plant like ITER.
