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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.
M. Wykes
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 48 | Number 1 | July-August 2005 | Pages 39-42
Technical Paper | Tritium Science and Technology - Tritium Processing, Transportation, and Storage | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A875
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The tritium inventory of all the ITER torus cryopumps open to the vacuum vessel has an administrative limit of 120 g, including tritium bound to hydrocarbon compounds formed by combination of fuel gas with carbon plasma-facing components. The total hydrogenic inventory of each of the torus cryopumps has to be less than that resulting in a deflagration pressure of 0.2 MPa (the design pressure of the ITER vacuum vessel of which the torus and neutral beam cryopump pressure boundaries are a part) following a hydrogen-air ignition. Since the neutral beamline fuelling is with protium and deuterium only, these pumps do not significantly contribute to the 120 g tritium limit. The hydrogenic inventories of both the torus and neutral beam cryopumps add to the total for the vacuum vessel following an in-vessel ingress of coolant from a failed water-cooled component, wherein hydrogen is produced from steam reacting with hot metallic dust. There is therefore a large incentive to keep the peak inventories of both the torus and neutral beamline cryopumps as low as practicable. The paper describes the regeneration patterns of the torus and neutral beamline cryopumps that are used to attain this goal while achieving the required vacuum conditions commensurate with the reference ITER pulse scenarios.
