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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.
Hao Wang, Zhiyao Xing, Eugene Shwageraus (Univ of Cambridge)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 805-814
The availability of Tritium is a problem for the Deuterium-Tritium (D-T) fusion reactors since the element does not exist in nature and has to be bred from Li-6 through neuron capture. The goal of this paper is to explore a possibility of operating a symbiotic system consisting of fleets of fission reactors coupled with fusion reactors. It is proposed in this paper to use salt with high Li-6 content in Fluoride salt-cooled High-temperature Reactor (FHRs) to produce tritium as fuel for D-T fusion reactors. Tritium breeding blankets will therefore no longer be required, potentially making fusion reactors simpler and cheaper to construct and maintain. Two FHR designs, i.e. pebble bed and prismatic block, are studied in this work to investigate the feasibility of the proposed Fission-Fusion hybrid systems. An investigation into neutronics, tritium production, and potential safety issues in the proposed FHR designs are carried out. The tradeoffs between fission reactor performance, such as achievable burnup and fresh fuel enrichment, and tritium production rate are also discussed. Results have shown that such hybrid systems are attractive and potentially feasible. The maximum tritium production rate of the selected design options can reach up to approximately 4 kg per GW thermal power per year.