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Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
A. A. Shoshin et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 59 | Number 1 | January 2011 | Pages 57-60
doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A11574
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The paper presents experimental investigations of plasma-surface interaction and materials behavior under plasma loads relevant to type I ITER ELMs. The experiments were performed with quasi-stationary plasma accelerator QSPA Kh-50 and multi-mirror trap GOL-3 devices located in Kharkov (Ukraine) and Novosibirsk (Russia) respectively. QSPA generated repetitive plasma streams of duration 0.25 ms and the energy density up to 2.5 MJ/m2. In GOL-3 multi-mirror trap plasma was heated up to temperature of 2-4 keV by a high power relativistic electron beam. Energy density in the exhaust plasma stream vary from 0.5 to 30 MJ/m2. Surface patterns of the targets exposed by QSPA and GOL-3 plasma are analyzed. Cracking, development of tungsten surface morphology and droplets splashing are discussed. It is shown that under an applied energy density loads (>1 MJ/m2) the evolution of surface morphology due to plasma irradiation are similar for two devices in spite of the qualitative differences of particles energy of the impact plasma streams. Formation of three different crack networks with typical cell sizes of 1000, 10 and 0.3 m are identified after irradiation of tungsten surface. Experiments show that major cracks (cell size of 1000 m) are attributed to a ductile-to-brittle transition. The key role of heat loads magnitude on development of surface due to powerful plasma impacts is demonstrated.
