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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.
S. Chatzidakis, P. T. Forsberg, L. H. Tsoukalas
Nuclear Technology | Volume 192 | Number 1 | October 2015 | Pages 61-73
Technical Paper | Radiation Transport and Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT14-112
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Governments are interested in radiation signal encryption in projects relating to international safeguards; however, the available algorithms do not suitably address the challenges presented by the increasing computational capability of various actors, which require recent encryption algorithms to be more robust against attack algorithms. Therefore, an algorithmic approach for performing radiation signal encryption employing the nonlinear capabilities of artificial neural networks with the noise-like properties of chaotic systems is proposed herein. The radiation signal digital envelope consists of the encrypted signal such as may be found through gamma spectroscopy, the secret key for the encryption, and the associated hash value. The presented algorithmic approach demonstrates, in an orderly manner, an integrated method for computing this radiation signal digital envelope. Indispensable constituents of encryption include both the construction of a time series with chaotic characteristics and the incorporation of a hash function generator to satisfy the security requirements of confidentiality, authentication, and nonrepudiation. The methodology is demonstrated via the encryption and subsequent decryption of two frequently occurring radiation signals, namely, gamma spectroscopy signals from 60Co and 137Cs. The results obtained demonstrate the capability of the algorithmic approach to integrate artificial neural networks and chaos dynamics to produce the radiation signal digital envelope (for given security requirements).