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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.
Ming-Shih Lu, Theodor Teichmann
Nuclear Technology | Volume 102 | Number 2 | May 1993 | Pages 196-209
Technical Paper | Nuclear Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT93-A34817
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The error characteristics of both high-resolution gamma spectroscopy and high-level neutron coincidence (HLNC) measurements, separate or combined, are discussed as they apply to nondestructive analysis of plutonium-bearing materials. Expressions have been derived to estimate the overall variance in the 240Pu effective mass and in the total plutonium mass in terms of the specific contributions from uncertainties in the measurements, the pertinent physical variables (including isotopics and impurities), and the instrumental constants. Experimental data available in the published literature have been used to illustrate the error characteristics of the HLNC and the effects of isotopic error correlations associated with materials having different burnups.
