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Latest News
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.
Matthew J. Jasica, Gerald L. Kulcinski, John F. Santarius
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 72 | Number 4 | November 2017 | Pages 719-725
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1350482
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new experimental facility at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Dual-Advanced Ion Simultaneous Implantation Experiment (DAISIE), has been designed and constructed to examine tungsten surface damage phenomena. These include microstructure formation and erosion due to helium bombardment as well as the retention of hydrogen gas while under the simultaneous bombardment of helium and deuterium ion beams, as would occur in ITER or other deuterium-burning fusion devices. DAISIE features two ion guns angled at 55° to the sample normal. These guns are independent with respect to beam current, allowing for a high degree of control over the separate D and He beams fluxes and fluences and the composition ratio of these ions impinging upon the tungsten sample surface. Preliminary results are available for helium-only implantations at energies of 30 keV to average fluences of 3 × 1018 He/cm2 in tungsten samples at temperatures of 900°C. As in prior experiments, surface damage appears to be highly-dependent on the crystallography of the individual grains. although a distinct set of helium-induced microstructures from past experiments is observed. Erosion yield is consistent with prior, similar helium irradiation experiments at the University of Wisconsin, but exceeds that predicted by physical sputtering yields and other past sputtering experiments.