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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.
Naphtali M. Mokgalapa, Tushar K. Ghosh, Robert V. Tompson, Sudarshan K. Loyalka
Nuclear Technology | Volume 194 | Number 3 | June 2016 | Pages 353-368
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NT15-106
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A methodology is developed to measure the adhesion force and the work of adhesion between aerosols generated in very-high-temperature reactors (VHTRs) and interacting with structural materials. The method uses an interactive system of a silver particle interacting with Haynes 230 (H230) surfaces, compares the measured data with theoretical values, and uses an atomic force microscope in an air environment glove box with ambient temperature of 20.27°C and relative humidity of 34.97%. The adhesion force data are obtained for a silver particle interacting with H230 under four different surface conditions including “as received” and after oxidation for 5, 10, and 15 min, respectively. It was found that the JKR (Johnson-Kendall-Roberts) theory predicted values that were up to three orders of magnitude higher than the experimental data. In contrast, the inclusion of surface roughness from both the particle and H230 samples in the calculations produced results that are one order of magnitude higher than the experimental data. These comparisons provide insight into the significant influence that surface roughness has on adhesion force. A range of values of 0.02 to 0.3 μN was obtained from the adhesion force distributions of measured data that can be used as bounds on forces that can be produced in a silver-H230 interactive system.