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Latest News
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.
Matthew J. Herman, Dominic Peterson, Kevin Henderson, Tana Cardenas, Christopher E. Hamilton, John Oertel, Brian M. Patterson
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 73 | Number 2 | March 2018 | Pages 166-172
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1387454
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Understanding deuterium-tritium mix in capsules is critical to achieving fusion within inertial confined fusion experiments. One method of understanding how the mix of hydrogen fuels can be controlled is by creating various structured deuterated foams and filling the capsule with liquid tritium. Historically, these materials have been a stochastically structured gas-blown foam. Later, to improve the uniformity of this material, pore formers have been used which are then chemically removed, leaving behind a foam of monodisperse voids. However, this technique is still imperfect in that fragments of the pore templating particles may not be completely removed and the void distribution may not be uniform over the size scale of the capsule. Recently, advances in three-dimensional printing suggest that it can be used to create microlattices and capsule walls in one single print. Demonstrated here are proof-of-concept microlattices produced using two-photon polymerization with submicrometer resolution of various structures as well as a microlattice-containing capsule. With this technology, complete control of the mixing structure is possible, amenable to modeling and easily modified for tailored target design.