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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.
Chien Chung, Liq-Ji Yuan
Nuclear Technology | Volume 109 | Number 2 | February 1995 | Pages 226-235
Technical Paper | Radiation Application | doi.org/10.13182/NT95-A35055
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A reactor-based facility of neutron capture, prompt gamma-ray spectrometry for activation analysis has been installed at the 1-MW low-power Tsing-Hua Open Pool Reactor. The system consists of a neutron beam port with collimators, irradiation station, external beam tube, neutron beam catcher, and counting system. The counting system contains a 25% n-type high-purity germanium, main gamma-ray detector, a 9- × 10-in. Nal(Tl) detector shield, and Compton-suppression/pair spectroscopic electronics coupled to the Canberra S-88 multiparameter analyzer. Although the neutron beam at the sample irradiation station has an intensity of only 1 300 000 n/cm2.s with a cadmium ratio of 26 to 1, the background levels of the on-line measurement in the mixed neutron/gamma field are sufficiently low, resulting in satisfactory detection of many elemental compositions in samples. The lower limits of detection of 42 elements in a sample matrix of the present system, its applications, and planned upgrade are considered.
