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The division was organized to promote the advancement of knowledge of the use of particle accelerator technologies for nuclear and other applications. It focuses on production of neutrons and other particles, utilization of these particles for scientific or industrial purposes, such as the production or destruction of radionuclides significant to energy, medicine, defense or other endeavors, as well as imaging and diagnostics.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
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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.
C. Postolache, A. Antohe, C. S. Tuta, G. Bubueanu, M. R. Ioan
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 3 | April 2020 | Pages 202-208
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1704109
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Annual tritium exposures can be reconstructed for long time periods by analyzing radioactive concentrations in tree rings near nuclear facilities that can release tritiated water (HTO) to the environment. Since the mass of analyzed samples is on the order of milligrams, usual methods such as liquid scintillation counting cannot be applied. The recommended method comprises thermal decomposition of the milligram-sized samples, reduction of the resulting HTO to tritiated hydrogen, quantitative absorption of titanium hydride (TiHT) in titanium powder, and determination of the H/T ratio using an accelerator mass spectrometer method. This paper describes the method for obtaining TiHT standards with different H/T isotopic ratios for calibration of a mass spectrometer detector.
