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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.
J. D. Kotulski, R. S. Coats, M. F. Pasik, M. Ulrickson
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 1 | July 2011 | Pages 272-277
In-Vessel Components - FW, Blanket, Shield & VV | Proceedings of the Nineteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE) (Part 1) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12364
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The ITER device is based on the tokamak concept of magnetic confinement in which the plasma is contained by the use of strong magnetic fields. The nearest structure to the plasma is the blanket system which provides shielding to the vacuum vessel and the superconducting magnets. There are potential abnormal operating environments where the plasma currents inside the tokamak are disrupted and induce eddy currents in the blanket (first wall and shield module). These currents interact with the large magnetic fields to produce forces in the blanket which could potentially cause mechanical failure in the first wall, shield module, or vacuum vessel. For this reason the design and qualification of the ITER blanket system requires appropriate high-fidelity electromagnetic simulations that capture the physics of these disruption scenarios.A number of different geometries will be discussed revealing the effect of different first wall designs and shield modules on the forces and torques experienced by these assemblies during plasma disruption.The key features of the modeling procedure will be presented including the plasma current modeling and geometric modeling of the first wall, shield modules, and vacuum vessel. The eddy current calculation is performed using the Opera-3d software.