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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.
Michiko Ahn Furudate, Seungyon Cho
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 77 | Number 1 | January 2021 | Pages 51-56
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2020.1843313
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The effects of temperature and pressure conditions on the equilibrium chemical compositions of purge gas at the outlet of the test blanket module (TBM) in the helium-cooled ceramic reflector (HCCR) are studied. As the chemical species in the equilibrium states, nine chemical species are considered: H, T, O, H2, HT, T2, H2O, HTO, and T2O. The mole fractions of these chemical species are calculated using a Gibbs free energy minimization method starting from the initial state of a H2-HTO mixture. The standard Gibbs free energies for the tritium species used in the study are calculated from the molecular constants obtained by a coupled-cluster calculation. The effects of pressure variations on the equilibrium compositions are shown to be negligible. The effects of temperature variations are also insignificant when the temperature exceeds 800 K. When the initial H2/HTO ratio is more than 10, more than 90% of tritium is expected to be recovered in the form of HT.
