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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.
X. Liu, W. Peng, F. Xie, J. Cao, Y. Dong, X. Duan, Y. Wen, B. Shan, K. Sun, G. Zheng
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 4 | May 2020 | Pages 513-525
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2020.1718856
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Tritium (3H) has been increasingly researched when assessing the environmental impact of nuclear reactors and other nuclear facilities because it is widely present in nuclear systems and can easily enter the environment. The first pebble-bed gas-cooled test reactor in China, the 10 MW high temperature gas-cooled test reactor (HTR-10), uses helium, graphite, and graphite spheres containing embedded tristructural-isotropic–coated particles as primary coolant, reflectors, and fuel elements, respectively. Several experiments that involved the 3H source term in HTR-10 were performed, and they measured the 3H specific activity and its distribution in the irradiated graphite spheres from the core, 3H activity concentration in the primary helium, 3H activity concentration during the regeneration of the molecular sieve adsorber in the helium purification system, and 3H amount in the gaseous effluent discharge from the stack. The experimental data were summarized and compared with the theoretical predictions. The balance diagram of the 3H source term in HTR-10 is introduced in this paper. Sensitivity analysis was performed to illustrate the effect of the 3He abundance in the primary helium and Li content in the graphite reflectors on the 3H activity concentration in the primary coolant of HTR-10. The interactions between graphite and different hydrogen isotopes (1H, 3H, 1H2, 1H3H, and 3H2) were investigated using first-principles calculations and the diffusion theory. The results indicated that molecular 3H tended to diffuse in graphite.