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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.
Nader M. A. Mohamed
Nuclear Technology | Volume 166 | Number 2 | May 2009 | Pages 187-196
Technical Papers | Radiation Measurements and Instrumentation | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A7405
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A procedure was developed for measuring the concentration of copper, in the Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis method, by measuring the produced 64Cu isotope activity (after irradiation) from the annihilation peak (511-keV peak). In this procedure the number of counts under the annihilation peak is divided into two categories: (a) counts coming from the decay of the 64Cu isotope and (b) counts coming from the interactions of energetic photons (with energies >1.022 MeV, the pair production threshold) with the detector and surrounding materials. The last category is evaluated and subtracted from the annihilation peak counts, and the rest of the counts are used to calculate the activity of 64Cu. Measuring copper concentration using this method will improve its detection limit. The method was validated by measuring the concentration of copper in four International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reference materials: Soil-7, Lake Sediment, Human Hair, and Hay Powder. The maximum deviation between the results and that given in IAEA certificates is 4.4%. The method decreased the detection limits of the four samples to ~3, ~4.5, ~0.6, and ~1 mg/kg, respectively.