Materials Research Facility at CCFE Martin O’Brien + Damian Brennan, Stephen Brown, Chris Hardie and colleagues

The Materials Research Facility New 2000m 2 building opening. Should be open this time next year

Timeline January 13Concept Design March 13Purchase of equipment with first NNUF money April 14Detailed Design August 14Build & Hot Cells contracts placed Sept 15MRF Open

The MRF ~ £10M. £5M from NNUF, remainder from CCFE funds Process active material for analysis on-site or back at the university Intermediate between universities (very low activity) and NNL at Sellafield. Non-licensed site – but with nuclear expertise, can take material up to ~ 1TBq ~50 MBq (e.g. Oxford) Universities 6 TBq (Co 60 ) CCFE Medium activity, structural NNL Most active, fuel cycle

Analysis available on Day 1 Dual beam FIB Nanoindenter SEM (with EDX, EBSD, TKD) Thermal Desorption Spectroscopy Plus workshop and experimental areas – T, Be and W tiles (JET), graphite … Room for more equipment, and building extension

Typical Process Or transferred to university Limited and temporary storage capacity (inventory for non-licensed site)

The analysis equipment is already available in non-active labs Present Users Bristol Manchester Oxford CCFE (including projects with Queen Mary London, Oxford Instruments) Analysis by CCFE for 2 companies on Culham site

Example – TKD analysis of indents First ever use of Transmission Kikuchi Diffraction for high resolution (~10nm) measurement of lattice rotations in plastically deformed region around nano- indents (in Vanadium). With Oxford Instruments EBSD resolution too coarse for small indents  TKD will be needed in MRF. Next steps: convert lattice rotation into true strain values and compare with spherical indentation results (with Oxford Univ.) iron Inverse pole figure orientation maps with band contrast (variation in TKD quality) imposed

Examples – size effects in nano-indentation Increase in yield and flow stress with decreasing nano-indenter tip size. Ongoing project on size effects on mechanical properties with Queen Mary London Manchester PhD project on W Variety of beam shapes & sizes tested No brittle fracture observed - plastic zone still large cf. beam size, large surface to volume ratio W-alloys and irradiated samples to be tested in future

Access to MRF Talk to us! Grant applications need to be drafted soon to use MRF in a year’s time Cost to be included in grant applications – will depend very much on what is done, hard to give a day rate. Need to consider cradle-to-grave lifecycle including eventual destination of samples Help from CCFE staff – scientists, waste, transport (later talk by NNL), etc.

Expansion of MRF Room for new hot cells and instrument cells to house new equipment Room to expand building – for macro-testing? Tell us what you want so together we can develop NNUF project proposals (session this afternoon)

Contact Materials Research Facility, Culham – –

Thank You Questions?