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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.
Do Heon Kim, Jong Kyung Kim
Nuclear Technology | Volume 124 | Number 2 | November 1998 | Pages 175-182
Technical Paper | Radiation Biology and Medicine | doi.org/10.13182/NT98-A2917
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A subcritical multiplying assembly (SMA) was employed to improve the relatively low neutron fluxes of a 252Cf source, and the feasibility of using it as the neutron source for boron neutron capture therapy was explored. The Monte Carlo code MCNP was used to evaluate the effective multiplication factor keff of the entire system, the intensities and percentages of the epithermal neutron flux at the patient-end surface of the beam, and dosimetric properties of the beam in the elliptical brain phantom. The neutron beam with the SMA provides an epithermal neutron flux ~13.2 times higher than the beam without the SMA. After some optimization procedures, the beam in the final design provides a maximum advantage depth (AD) of 8.9 cm, a minimum AD of 7.3 cm, an advantage ratio of 5.5, and a therapeutic relative biological effectiveness dose rate of 4.23 cGy/min per 100 mg of 252Cf at a depth of 7.0 cm in the brain phantom. This dose rate is ~10 times higher than that provided by the beam designed without the SMA. Therefore, it is expected that the neutron beam can be more effective for treatment of tumors due to the increased therapeutic dose rates.
