NNUF capability proposals

1. Sample preparation equipment to support the NNL NNUF facilities - £300k NNL's existing irradiated material preparation facilities require significant augmentation to provide the volume and quality of samples that are required by the instruments already purchased with NNUF funding. Funding is sought for the following: Additional fume hood space, Ion beam thinning equipment (TEM samples), Electropolishing chiller, Data analysis workstation, SEM sample cleaner, Ion beam cross-section polisher (SEM samples) Vacuum furnace Cut-off saw The above equipment will be essential for users of the NNUF facilities at Central Lab in order to produce high quality samples for use on the microscopes and other equipment.

Active SEM capability for NNL NNUF A new low-vacuum analytical SEM would provide the required SEM capacity and range of analytical techniques for the examination of irradiated fuel and materials. SEM examination is a frequent requirement alongside X-ray tomography and TEM and NNL’s current active SEM is very heavily used for commercial contracts. The instrument would use an existing EBSD system already acquired with NNUF funding which will not be usable once the FIB on which it is currently installed goes active. High specification EDX capabilities (to match those acquired as part of the NCFE portfolio) would be required along with the ability to mount other systems such as cathodoluminescence. The building work already underway to house NNL's NNUF facilities includes a room for an analytical SEM.

Manpower for NNL NNUF operations Though some aspects of the operating costs are covered by existing service contracts, additional staffing will be required to maintain, operate and manage the additional equipment and the increased number of users created by the NNUF. This requires some level of support in order to make the business case for recruitment of new NNL staff. The instruments require regular care and maintenance at the level of about ~120 man days per year Management of the user facility interactions with users also needs to be funded. The requirement here will be affected by the operating model chosen for NNUF access.

A national irradiated materials archive and irradiated materials testing facility An archive or library of materials is a key enabler for research programmes using irradiated samples. In many cases it is impractical to physically move the material and a register of available material would suffice. In other cases, though, a dedicated shielded storage facility having facilities for cutting and receiving/dispatching sub-sections is required. This facility will play a key role between the receipt and dispatch facilities at NNL's Central and Windscale laboratories and other UK and international sources of material on the supply side and the CCFE MRF and university facilities as user facilities which have much lower limits on the quantities of radioactive material that they can store. The receipt/dispatch and cutting facilities could be shared with a shielded mechanical testing facility within the same building. Such a facility would be able to provide mechanical properties data from samples up to and including the Charpy, tensile and fracture toughness samples in industry-standard surveillance testing programmes.