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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.
S. E. Lee, Y. Hatano, M. Hara, M. Matsuyama
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 3 | April 2020 | Pages 327-332
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2020.1711855
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nondestructive measurement of tritium (T) content in solid materials is important for safe and cost-effective disposal of contaminated wastes, and beta-ray induced X-ray spectrometry (BIXS) has been developed for this purpose. A common way to obtain depth profiles of T in solids using BIXS is to perform simulation of X-ray spectra for assumed depth profiles and find a profile giving the best agreement with observation. A detailed understanding of attenuation of low-energy X-rays (≤18.6 keV) by detector components such as a window material is required for interpretation of measured spectra and simulation. In this study, BIXS spectra of a tungsten reference sample with known T depth profile were measured using two different semiconductor detectors and simulated using the Monte Carlo simulation toolkit Geant4. In the low-energy region (<2 keV), the difference in internal structure resulted in a noticeable difference in the BIXS spectra. The disagreement between the measured and the simulated spectra was also significant at <2 keV. Nevertheless, at >2 keV, the BIXS spectra were insensitive to the internal structure of the detector, and the simulated spectra agreed well with the measured ones. The mechanism underlying the difference in the low-energy region was discussed.