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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. Scott Willms
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 48 | Number 1 | July-August 2005 | Pages 204-207
Technical Paper | Tritium Science and Technology - Decontamination and Waste | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A912
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An important part of tritium facility waste management is estimating the residual tritium inventory in stainless steel. This was needed as part of the decontamination and decommissioning associated with the Tritium Systems Test Assembly at Los Alamos National Laboratory. In particular, the disposal path for three, large tanks would vary substantially depending on the tritium inventory in the stainless steel walls. For this purpose the time-dependant diffusion equation was solved using previously measured parameters. These results were compared to previous work that measured the tritium inventory in the stainless steel wall of a 50-L tritium container. Good agreement was observed. These results are reduced to a simple algebraic equation that can readily be used to estimate tritium inventories in room temperature stainless steel based on tritium partial pressure and exposure time. Results are available for both constant partial pressure exposures and for varying partial pressures. Movies of the time dependant results were prepared which are particularly helpful for interpreting results and drawing conclusions.