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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.
A. Nikroo, D. Woodhouse
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 35 | Number 2 | March 1999 | Pages 202-205
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST99-A11963923
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Plasma polymer coating of larger (1 mm or greater in diameter) Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) targets in a piezo electric based bounce pan results in surfaces which contain numerous domes of various sizes for coating thicknesses greater than about 3 μm. The density of domes increases with the size of the shells, number of shells coated at once, the strength of bouncing, and the coating thickness. The same problem is encountered when bounce coating large numbers of smaller Nova shells as well. The domes appear to grow from seeds produced by chips of the brittle plasma polymer coating itself produced in shell-to-shell collisions. A tilted spinning pan has been shown to produce smooth dome free coating while providing sufficient agitation to obtain uniform coatings.
