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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.
R. E. Nygren
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 3 | April 2005 | Pages 549-553
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - First Wall, Blanket, and Shield | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-8
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Investigations of designs with a flowing free-surface molten salt as a first wall in the Advanced Power Extraction (APEX) Program led to questions concerning the liquidus temperature and solidification processes for the [1:1:1] composition in the LiF, BeF2 and NaF system. Sandia experiments, reported in this conference, showed a liquidus temperature near 425°C for the [1:1:1] composition. We also identified other compositions that showed congruent (eutectic) solidification and had sufficiently low melting temperatures (~305-320°C) to be useful in this application. Further characterization of these materials is necessary to evaluate their potential. This paper summarizes a 3-D finite element analysis of the experiment that evaluates thermal gradients in the salt pool and crucible, reproduces the "thermal plateau" associated with the isothermal freezing of a eutectic, and compares the calculated temperatures with readings from the three thermocouples in the experiment.
