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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.
H. Takenaga, Y. Miura, H. Kubo, Y. Sakamoto, H. Hiratsuka, H. Ichige, I. Yonekawa, Y. Kawamata, S. Tsuiji-Iio, R. Sakamoto, S. Kobayashi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 50 | Number 1 | July 2006 | Pages 76-83
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1222
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Burning plasma simulation experiments were performed for burn control study on ELMy H-/L-mode plasmas and reversed shear (RS) plasmas with an internal transport barrier in JT-60U. In a burning plasma simulation scheme, two neutral beam (NB) groups were used: one that simulates alpha-particle heating and another that simulates external heating. For the alpha-particle heating simulation, the heating power proportional to the deuterium-deuterium (D-D) neutron yield rate was injected. The behavior of the part of the NB heating simulating alpha-particle heating was varied by increasing the proportional gain relating the applied power to the measured neutron yield rate in both ELMy H-mode and RS plasmas, while the part of the NB power in the role of external heating was held constant i.e., no-burn-control case. Above a certain value of the proportional gain, a runaway effect was triggered where excursive increases in the neutron yield rate and stored energy were observed. With burn control, where the stored energy was controlled at a constant value by a feedback control system using the external heating, the runaway was not triggered, and the neutron yield rate was kept at a constant value in the L-mode plasmas. Zero-dimensional calculation indicated that the runaway triggered by increasing the proportional gain well simulates the runaway triggered by improved confinement. The limitations came from differences between deuterium-tritium and D-D plasmas, such as the dominant reaction for the neutron yield and the temperature dependence of the fusion reaction rate, which were discussed together with improvement on the burning plasma simulation scheme.