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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.
Zongwei Wang, Qi Wang, Xuesen Zhao, Yong Hu, Dangzhong Gao, Jie Meng, Xing Tang, Xiaojun Ma
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 75 | Number 4 | May 2019 | Pages 308-316
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1565855
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Noncontact radiography is developed to determine the doping concentration of inertial confinement fusion shells based on an improved equivalent absorption method by real-time X-ray imaging. Elements of high atomic number (high-Z)/middle atomic number (mid-Z) are doped into the shells to prevent hot electrons from preheating the fuel and to restrain the growth of hydromechanic instability. In this paper, an improved equivalent absorption model is developed to determine doping concentration by real-time X-ray imaging. Compared to contact radiography (CR) with film imaging, this technique can be used to obtain doping concentrations at different angles as a supplement to the CR method, even if the dynamic range of a charge-coupled device is less than film imaging. Experiments are carried out to determine the doping concentrations of Ge-doped and Si-doped shells. Uncertainties of the results are analyzed, and the expanded uncertainties are approximated to 0.1 at. % (K = 2, confidence factor). The experimental results show that there is a high level of agreement between this method and energy dispersive spectroscopy with the modified model.