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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.
V. S. Burmasov et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 59 | Number 1 | January 2011 | Pages 301-303
doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A11642
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Laser interferometry is an extensively used diagnostic for fusion experiments. Well-known problems of the method such as vibration, stability of the initial phase, a refraction and uncertainty in the phase shift are resolved in this paper as a result of the matching of the interferometer parameters with parameters of the GOL-3 multimirror trap. An initial phase of CO2 ( = 10.28 m) Michelson interferometer is controlled remotely with piezoelectric. The piezoelectric ceramics is also used to calibrate the interferometer. To exclude the effects of stray magnetic fields all elements of the interferometer is made of dielectric materials. The LN2 cooled HgCdTe photodiode is used for interferogram registration with time resolution of ~10 ns. The interferometer showed excellent performance with minimal maintenance.