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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.
Marco Ferrari, Massimo Furrer, Giorgio Simbolotti, Carlo Talarico
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 30 | Number 3 | December 1996 | Pages 1011-1015
Fusion Blanket and Shield Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST96-A11963069
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Following a preliminary test campaign (200 thermal cycles) on a solid breeder blanket mockup, an extended test campaign (about 1000 thermal cycles) has been carried out by ENEA. The duration of the test campaign represents a significant fraction of the blanket module lifetime in the ITER device. In particular, these out-of-pile experiments have been performed in order to test (both functional and endurance testing) the thermal-hydraulic and thermo-mechanical performance of a water cooled breeder-in-tube blanket mockup (1-PIN) using Li2ZrO3 pebbles as a breeder material.
The test campaign has been completed and the resulting data concerning thermal and thermal-hydraulic parameters have been elaborated and analyzed by means of a comparison with theoretical predictions based on a proper thermal-hydraulic model.
The post test examination of the pebbles is in progress in order to investigate the thermo-mechanical behavior of the breeder material under cycling.
The paper deals with the first part of the results.
