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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.
Sebastian Mirz, Uwe Besserer, Beate Bornschein, Robin Größle, Bennet Krasch, Stefan Welte
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 3 | April 2017 | Pages 375-380
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2016.1273706
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An integral part of the fuel cycle of future fusion facilities is the isotope separation system (ISS). The Tritium Laboratory Karlsruhe (TLK) is currently developing a system to monitor the concentration of all six hydrogen isotopologues Q2 (H2, HD, D2, HT, DT, T2) in the liquid phase in the cryogenic distillation process of the ISS.
Liquid inactive Q2 were already successfully analyzed under cryogenic conditions via infrared (IR) absorption spectroscopy and calibration data for D2 is provided by previous experiments at TLK. The new experiment T2ApIR (Tritium Absorption Infrared Spectroscopy Experiment) is designed to be fully tritium compatible to perform a complete calibration of the IR absorption measurement system with all six hydrogen isotopologues in the liquid phase under conditions similar to the ISS. This provides a unique non-invasive, inline and real-time measurement system for isotopologic concentration determination, ready for implementation in the cryogenic distillation column.