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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.
Kunihiro Yamamoto, Zensaku Kawara, Tomoaki Kunugi, Takayoshi Norimatsu
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 2 | August 2011 | Pages 585-589
IFE Design & Technology | Proceedings of the Nineteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE) (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12446
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To protect from high-energy fluxes caused by nuclear fusion reaction to a first wall of a laser-fusion reactor such as KOYO reactor, the cascade-type falling liquid-metal film flow was proposed as a liquid-wall concept which was one of the reactor chamber cooling and wall protection schemes. In this concept, vapor released by fuel targets and the liquid wall will be condensed on the chamber ceiling which is kept relatively cold. The condensed liquid-metal vapor makes many droplets on the ceiling, and then the droplets will agglomerate, and eventually make the liquid film on the ceiling surface. The liquid-metal film will flow from the ceiling to the liquid first-wall. In this study, the proof-of-principal (POP) experiments and numerical simulations were conducted regarding the liquid-film flow on the ceiling wall. It is found that if the liquid film is formed on the ceiling surface, the liquid flows along the ceiling wall and from the ceiling wall down to the reactor core as long as the vapor is supplied. Moreover, the measurements of the liquid-film thickness were taken by using a confocal laser scanning microscopy, and the effects of the wettability of the wall on the liquid film flow behavior were obtained.