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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.
A. N. Golubkov, A. A. Kononenko, A. A. Yukhimchuk
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 48 | Number 1 | July-August 2005 | Pages 527-533
Technical Paper | Tritium Science and Technology - Materials Interaction and Permeation | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A981
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Hydrogen isotopes sources with pressure up to several thousand atmospheres are required to pursue some investigations in nuclear and thermonuclear processes. Investigations are performed in mixtures of all three hydrogen isotopes. Stringent requirements are placed on such sources. Primarily, this is reliability and safety, purity of supplied gas, possibility of smooth pressure control, minimal dimensions and the ease to operate. Vanadium-base thermodesorption sources meet these requirements. Literature data on equilibrium pressures of hydrogen isotopes desorption over vanadium dihydride phase have been reviewed. It has been shown that in data analysis, gas nonideality at high pressure should be taken into account. In particular, when showing temperature dependencies of desorption equilibrium pressures it is reasonable to use appropriate value of fugacity. The paper presents temperature dependencies of protium and deuterium fugacity over corresponding dihydride vanadium phases in the range of 300-635K, determined using experimental data of the authors. Temperature dependence of tritium fugacity over dihydride vanadium phase at 273-483K determined using experimental data of the authors and available literature data are also presented. A series of vanadium-base thermodesorption high-pressure hydrogen isotopes sources have been developed in RFNC-VNIIEF using of the obtained dependencies. Schemes of sources for research in fundamental science are presented.