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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.
Satoshi Sato et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 4 | May 2005 | Pages 1046-1051
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - First Wall, Blanket, and Shield | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A825
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In order to evaluate the impacts of the incident neutron spectrum and the tungsten armor on the tritium production, integral experiments have been performed with small partial mockups relevant to the ITER test blanket module using DT neutrons at FNS of JAERI. The Monte Carlo calculation results for the integrated tritium productions agree well with the experimental data within 2 and 11 % for the mockups without the armor in the experiments without and with the neutron reflector, respectively. It is clarified that the tritium production can be very accurately predicted in the experiment without the reflector. In the mockups with the 12.6 and 25.2 mm thick tungsten armors, it is experimentally clarified that the integrated tritium productions are reduced by 3 and 6 % relative to the case without the armor, respectively.