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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. A. Argekar, S. K. Thulasidas, M. J. Kulkarni, M. K. Bhide, R. Sampathkumar, S. V. Godbole, V. C. Adya, B. A. Dhawale, B. Rajeshwari, Neelam Goyal, P. J. Purohit, A. G. Page, A. G. I. Dalvi, T. R. Bangia, M. D. Sastry, P. R. Natarajan
Nuclear Technology | Volume 84 | Number 2 | February 1989 | Pages 196-204
Technical Paper | Analyse | doi.org/10.13182/NT89-A34187
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Uranium-aluminum alloys with a significant enrichment of uranium with 233U or 235U serve as nuclear fuels in research reactors. The quality assurance of this fuel requires, among other things, precise knowledge that all trace metal constituents that affect neutron economy, fuel integrity, and fuel fabrication process parameters are well within the specification limits. Trace metal characterization of 233U-Al alloy has been carried out by atomic spectrometry. The trace metal constituents of interest are grouped into common metals (silver, boron, calcium, cadmium, cobalt, chromium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, molybdenum, sodium, nickel, lead, silicon, tin, titanium, vanadium, tungsten, and zinc) and lanthanides (cerium, dysprosium, europium, gadolinium, holmium, lutetium, samarium, and terbium). The elements yttrium and zirconium are grouped with the latter in view of the chemical separation procedure used. The alloy samples are dissolved in 6 M HCl and evaporated to dryness with nitric acid, and the residue is ignited to oxide. The common metals other than silver are determined in the oxide samples using carrier excitation of the analyte spectra obtained using a computer-controlled multichannel direct reading spectrometer. Electrothermal atomization atomic absorption spectrometry is used for determining silver, using the nitric acid solution of the alloy. The rare earth elements yttrium and zirconium are determined after separation from the U-Al matrix, using a sequence of chemical procedures. In the first stage, uranium is separated by solvent extraction using a TnOA/xylene/HCl system and in the second stage aluminum is separated as sodium-aluminate. The trace elements are determined by a dc arc emission spectrographic method after chemical separation. Of these, dysprosium, europium, gadolinium, and samarium are determined by inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry also. These methods are found to be quite adequate for the requirements of U-Al alloy fuel samples. Typical detection limits of these analytes varied in the 0.01-to 1.25-µg range. The precision varied in the 10 to 35% range. The waste generated in these processes has been treated for quantitative recovery of 233U.
