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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.
Paul P.H. Wilson, H. Tsige-Tamirat, Hesham Y. Khater, Douglass L. Henderson
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 34 | Number 3 | November 1998 | Pages 784-788
Fusion Blanket and Shield Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST98-A11963709
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
ALARA [Analytic and Laplacian Adaptive Radioactivity Analysis] v1.0,1,2 a new activation code released in January 1998 and developed specifically for the analysis of radioactivity in fusion energy systems, has been validated by comparison to other commonly used activation codes, FISPACT-973 and DKR-Pulsar 2.04 using the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] Fusion Evaluated Nuclear Data Library [FENDL] Calculational Activation Benchmark.5 The solutions to the benchmark problem for both steady-state and pulsed operation have been calculated with all three programs on the same IBM RS/6000 workstation. In addition to comparing the total activity in each of the 44 non-void zones and the isotopic contributions to the activity at specific spatial points, the required computing time has been compared. For the steady state problem, agreement between ALARA and FISPACT-97 for the total activity was within 2.5% in all zones at all cooling times, and within 0.5% in most zones. For both the steady state and pulsed problem, agreement between ALARA and DKR-Pulsar 2.0 was within 1% in all zones and at all cooling times where tritium inventories were not significant. The agreement between ALARA and FISPACT-97 for the individual isotopic inventories in the stainless steel first wall back-plate were within 1% for all dominant isotopes at all cooling times, while the DKR-Pulsar 2.0 results showed some significant discrepancies. The processing time for ALARA is 2/3 of that for DKR-Pulsar 2.0 and less than 1/5 of that for FISPACT-97. This validation exercise proves that ALARA is an accurate and fast computational tool for the calculation of induced activity in fusion power systems.
