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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.
M. Piera, J.M. Martínez-Val, J.M. Perlado
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 20 | Number 4 | December 1991 | Pages 964-968
Fusion-Fission Hybrids | doi.org/10.13182/FST91-A11946968
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The neutronic performance of a hybrid in analysed on the basis of a set of lumped parameters which properly characterize the main features of the hybrid, as energy multiplication or fissile breeding. This analysis enables one to identify the parametric ranges or design windows where a specific hybrid objective can be met. It is shown that fissile fuel production to feed fission reactors requires a set of parameters totally different from that of an energy amplifier hybrid. The latter can be designed to maintain a high factor of energy multiplication for very long burnups. The former reaches the maximum capability to feed fission reactors in the limit of fission-suppressed hybrids, which requires the fertile capture cross section to be as high as possible as compared to the fissile fission cross section. Upper limits of the magnitudes characterizing the neutronic performance are identified.
