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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.
S. Hamaguchi, T. Okamura, S. Imagawa, T. Obana, N. Yanagi, T. Mito
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 58 | Number 1 | July-August 2010 | Pages 581-585
Chapter 12. Superconducting Magnet System | Special Issue on Large Helical Device (LHD) | doi.org/10.13182/FST10-A10845
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The helical coils in the Large Helical Device (LHD) are large-scale superconducting magnets for heliotron plasma experiments. The cooling system of the coils was upgraded in 2006 to improve the cryogenic stability of the coils using subcooled helium as the coolant. In the present study, characteristics of the upgraded cooling system have been investigated and the steady-state operating method in which the subcooled helium of 50 g/s at 3.2 K is supplied stably to the coils has been developed. The supplied helium is subcooled via a heat exchanger in a saturated helium bath. The bath pressure and the temperature are reduced by a series of two centrifugal cold compressors. Based on the measured characteristics of the subcooling system, the optimization of the operating method has been performed using an automatic control of the mass flow rate through the cold compressors by the heater. Consequently, the designed mass flow rate and temperature were obtained and stable long-term operations have been achieved. The improvement of the cryogenic stability was also confirmed and the maximum average current of three blocks of the coils has reached up to 11.833 kA.
