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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.
X. R. Wang, S. Malang, M. S. Tillack, ARIES Team
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 1 | July 2011 | Pages 218-222
Divertor & High Heat Flux Components | Proceedings of the Nineteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE) (Part 1) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12355
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper considers a combination of ARIES modular finger concept and a design with helium channels in a thick plate. Multiple-jet cooling at a back side of a plasma facing surface is employed in this concept. The plasma facing surface is subdivided into a large number of small hexagonal modules, similar to the EU finger concept. Such a modularization reduces thermal stresses and allows therefore maximum surface heat flux of 10 MW/m2 at least. A solution has been found allowing brazing the fingers made of a W-alloy directly into the W-plate, avoiding in this way the connection of dissimilar materials with largely different thermal expansion coefficients. For an increase in reliability, double walled thimbles are used in the most critical region, providing an additional barrier against leaks of the high pressure helium. Thermal-mechanical calculations confirmed the expected high performance of the concept with the maximum allowable heat flux > 10 MW/m2 with all the components staying in the elastic regime. Extensive analyses of non-linear materials responses, such as plastic deformation (yield) are performed to allow the materials to be pushed beyond 3Sm in order to determine the maximum allowable heat flux can be.