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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.
Mikio Enoeda, Yosihiro Ohara, Nicole Roux, Alice Ying, Giovanni Pizza, Siegfried Malang
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 39 | Number 2 | March 2001 | Pages 612-616
Fusion Materials | doi.org/10.13182/FST01-A11963305
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The effective thermal conductivity of the pebble beds is one the most important design parameters for pebble bed solid breeder blanket. In the framework of IEA Implementing Agreement on Solid Breeder Subtask Group, measurement of pebble bed thermal conductivity by the hot wire method were defined as one of tasks to provide comparative information on the effective thermal conductivity of candidate ceramic pebble beds for DEMO blanket designs and ITER breeding blanket design. The authors previously reported the preliminary result of the pebble bed thermal conductivity for Li2O, Be and Al2O3. This paper presents the result of Li2TiO3, Li2ZrO3 (1 mm diameter) from CEA, and Li4SiO4 (0.25 - 0.63 mm diameter) from FZK.
Observation was compared to the correlations, SZB model and HM model. Contact area fraction was obtained by correlation fitting, of which the value is 4.9×10−3 for Li2TiO3, Li2ZrO3 (the same value as Li2O) and 1×10−6 for and Li4SiO4.
