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Latest News
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. C. Chen, K. A. Moreno, Y. T. Lee, J. J. Wu, A. Q. L. Nguyen, H. Huang, K. Sequoia, A. Nikroo
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 59 | Number 1 | January 2011 | Pages 8-13
Technical Paper | Nineteenth Target Fabrication Meeting | doi.org/10.13182/FST59-8-13
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The National Ignition Tuning Campaign involves a dozen capsule designs. These capsule designs vary in diameters, layer thicknesses, and germanium doping levels, examining implosion velocity, entropy, hot-spot shape, mix, and uncertainty. Overall yield of these tuning capsules involves meeting all individual specifications, including layer thicknesses, doping levels, outer surface smoothness, and inner diameter. The yield of scaled tuning capsules with acceptable inner diameters is greatly affected by the available mandrel diameter and its size distribution.Surface low mode and isolated defect specifications have been tightened. The new specification allows smaller and fewer isolated defects. The surface specification is quantified in terms of low mode factors, peak velocity root-mean-square (PVRMS), mix mass, and ignition threshold function (ITF). The total mix mass from all isolated defects should be <40 ng, and the PVRMS value should be <10 m. While most current capsules meet the PVRMS requirement, only some tuning capsules have a mix mass <40 ng. The majority of capsules have a mix mass >40 ng, caused by a few larger domes. The ITF is related to isolated defects and capsule power spectra. Some capsules exceed the ITF specification value of 1.3.