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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.
Takuya Nagasaka, Takeo Muroga, Motoaki Imamura, Shigeki Tomiyama, Masafumi Sakata
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 39 | Number 2 | March 2001 | Pages 659-663
Fusion Materials | doi.org/10.13182/FST01-A11963314
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
High-purity V-4Cr-4Ti low activation alloy products, such as plates and wires, were fabricated from the NIFS-HEAT-1 ingot with improvements of the conventional manufacturing processes. During fabrication, significant and small increase in hydrogen and oxygen level were observed, respectively. However, these contaminants were released by a heat treatment at 673 K or higher in a vacuum. For the purpose of obtaining an appropriate thermomechanical treatment condition, recrystallization behavior of plate products, which were 6.6, 4.0, 1.9 mm thick, was investigated after cold rolling. It was revealed that annealing at 1273 K for one to two hours provides recrystallized grains of 20-30 μm. Only in the case of 1.9 mm-thick plates which experienced large degree of cross rolling, a layer of finer grain was observed in the vicinity of the surface. The NIFS-HEAT-1 products are going through Round-robin tests by Japanese universities.