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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.
Paolo Rocco, Massimo Zucchetti
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 30 | Number 3 | December 1996 | Pages 1550-1556
Safety and Environment | doi.org/10.13182/FST96-A11963171
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To minimize the amount of radioactive waste requiring permanent disposal may strongly influence the environmental acceptability of fusion power. The waste management strategy applied here to the activated waste of ITER achieves this goal by maximizing recycling (reuse of the material) and clearance (declassification to non active waste). Limits of the surface dose rates of the waste after an interim storage of 50 years define various recycling procedures. The possibility of clearance is assessed from limits of the specific activity of the waste. These limits depend on the relative hazard of the radionuclides contained in the waste.
It turns out that only a small part of ITER materials have such a radioactivity as to prevent its recycling or clearance (namely, first wall and front blanket). Most of the blanket and all the vessel may be recycled by remote handling. All the other components can be cleared or “hands-on” recycled.
