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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.
Junjie Zhao, Zhaochun Zhang, Haibo Guo, Yang Wang
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 80 | Number 5 | July 2024 | Pages 666-681
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2228013
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A computational study of the thermodynamic and elastic properties of the tungsten-berylliuminterface structure and the behavior of a helium-vacancy pair near the tungsten/beryllium interface is carried out by first-principles calculations. Briefly, the following properties were calculated: (1) electronic properties of the tungsten/beryllium interface structure and (2) thermodynamic functions, Gibbs free energy, entropy, and enthalpy and anisotropies and isotropic (poly-crystalline) elastic moduli (bulk, torsion, Young’s moduli) of the tungsten/beryllium interface structure containing helium interstitial atoms or helium-vacancy pairs. The computational study was to provide a critical appraisal of the effect of helium interstitial atoms on the properties of the tungsten/beryllium interface structure. Calculated interface properties could be incorporated in an antiradiation damaging feature evaluation system to develop and test tungsten-based composites as plasma-facing materials.
