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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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.
W. H. Doniger, T. Chrobak, K. Dolan, K. Britsch, A. Couet, K. Sridharan (Univ of Wisconsin, Madison)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 799-804
A static corrosion experiment at UW-Madison aims to demonstrate the ability to mitigate corrosion of structural materials at 700?C by controlling the FLiBe salt redox condition. The utility of an electrochemical cell potential called the FLiBe salt redox potential is investigated as a metric for predicting the corrosive potential of FLiBe salt. In general, a salt which possesses a redox potential that is small in magnitude is considered less corrosive, more reducing, than a salt with a larger, more oxidizing, redox potential. The magnitude of the cell potential, measured between a molybdenum electrode and a dynamic beryllium reference electrode (DBRE), is correlated with the introduction of common FLiBe salt impurities, such as chromium, iron and nickel fluorides. Corrosion samples were exposed to FLiBe with varying redox conditions: as received purified FLiBe and FLiBe which has been chemically reduced with beryllium metal. The salts were characterized using the FLiBe salt redox potential and spectroscopic analytical chemistry to elucidate the importance of controlling the salt redox condition during reactor operation.