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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. Welte, E. Fanghänel, S. Fischer, F. Kramer, T. L. Le, M. Sturm, N. Tuchscherer
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 3 | April 2017 | Pages 316-320
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1291233
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
One of the main tasks of the Tritium Laboratory Karlsruhe (TLK) is the operation of the Windowless Gaseous Tritium Source (WGTS) of the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment, which will perform an absolute measurement of the neutrino mass with a sensitivity of 200 meV/c2 (90% confidence level). While the Inner Loop system of KATRIN provides a stabilized tritium throughput of 40 g day−1 in the WGTS, the outer loop is required for tritium clean-up, purification, and accountancy.
The ability of the outer loop to supply tritium has been investigated using feed gas samples of different compositions. This paper will describe the gas processing tests which were done with batches of approximately 1 mol of tritium each and 20 mol in total, processed on a day-to-day basis in the TLK tritium loop. It is shown, that an isotopic tritium purity of > 98% can reliably supplied to the KATRIN experiment. This is sufficient to maintain the required isotopic tritium purity of > 95% in the KATRIN inner loop.
