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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.
Shodai Sakurada, Yuki Uemura, Hiroe Fujita, Keisuke Azuma, Takeshi Toyama, Naoaki Yoshida, Tatsuya Hinoki, Sosuke Kondo, Yuji Hatano, Masashi Shimada, Dean Buchenauer, Takumi Chikada, Yasuhisa Oya
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 72 | Number 4 | November 2017 | Pages 785-788
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1350480
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The annealing effects on deuterium (D) retention for 0.1–1.0 dpa iron (Fe) ion damaged W were studied as a function of annealing duration. The D2 spectra for Fe damaged W with lower defect concentration showed that D trapped by vacancy clusters was clearly decreased as increasing annealing duration due to the recovery of vacancy clusters. On the other hand, at higher defect concentration, the desorption peak of D trapped by voids was shifted toward higher temperature side, which would be caused by aggregation of vacancies and vacancy clusters. It can be said that the recovery and aggregation behavior of defects are controlled by defect concentration. By disappearing of desorption of D trapped by vacancy clusters after annealing for longer duration, the desorption of D trapped by vacancies was increased, which could be explained by following two possibilities. One is that the retention of hydrogen isotope trapped by monovacancy was increased. The other is that number of vacancies during annihilation process of vacancy cluster were formed by annealing.
