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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.
K. Tanaka, K. Kawahata, T. Tokuzawa, T. Akiyama, M. Yokoyama, M. Shoji, C. A. Michael, L. N. Vyacheslavov, S. Murakami, A. Wakasa, A. Mishchenko, K. Muraoka, S. Okajima, H. Takenaga, LHD Experiment Group
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 58 | Number 1 | July-August 2010 | Pages 70-90
Chapter 3. Confinement and Transport | Special Issue on Large Helical Device (LHD) | doi.org/10.13182/FST10-A10795
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Particle confinement processes are studied in detail on the Large Helical Device (LHD). Diffusion coefficients (D) and convection velocities (V) are estimated from density modulation experiments. The magnetic configuration and collisionality are widely scanned in order to investigate parameter dependences of D and V. To study the effect of the magnetic configuration, magnetic axis positions (Rax) are scanned from 3.5 to 3.9 m. This scan changes the magnetic ripples quite significantly, enabling the effects of neoclassical properties on measured values to be widely elucidated. Dependences of electron temperature (Te) and helically trapped normalized collisionality are examined using the heating power scan of neutral beam injection. It was found that generally larger (or smaller) contributions of neoclassical transport in the core region, where normalized position < 0.7, resulted in more hollow (or peaked) density profiles. The larger neoclassical contribution was found to be situated at a more outwardly shifted Rax for the same Te and for higher Te or lower h* at each Rax. However, it is to be noted that Rax = 3.5 m shows different characteristics from these trends, that is, a more peaked density profile at higher Te or lower h*. The edge ( > 0.7) diffusion and convection are dominated by anomalous processes. Measured edge turbulence shows a possible linkage.