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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.
C. Spindloe, M. K. Tolley, P. Hiscock, M. Beardsley, J. J. Spencer
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 59 | Number 1 | January 2011 | Pages 221-226
Technical Paper | Nineteenth Target Fabrication Meeting | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A11528
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The United States and France are constructing multi-billion-dollar laser facilities to demonstrate inertial fusion as a potential source of energy for the future. These facilities aim to use the inertial confinement fusion scheme to demonstrate ignition on the 2010-2012 timescale. The recently launched High Power Laser Energy Research facility (HiPER) project is a European initiative to offer a credible way to build upon this work and demonstrate the possibility of opening up inertial fusion energy as a commercial process for energy generation. These facilities pose huge engineering and scientific challenges not only in their design but also in the technical challenges of providing the targets that will contain the fuel required to run them. We review the current manufacturing techniques of the cone target component as well as the work toward mass production of this component.
