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Latest News
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.
G.-N. Luo, Q. Li, J. M. Chen, X. Liu, W. Liu, Z. J. Zhou, D. M. Yao
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 62 | Number 1 | July-August 2012 | Pages 9-15
PFC and FW Materials Issues | Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Fusion Reactor Materials, Part A: Fusion Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A14104
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A project to realize, in several years, a W/Cu divertor on Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) with ITER-like plasma-facing component (PFC) configuration was launched at Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP) in 2010. The ITER-like configuration should withstand the rapid increase in particle and power impact onto the divertor and demonstrate the feasibility of the ITER design under practical long-pulse tokamak plasmas. The project could help not only EAST experiments, but also realize ITER PFC technology validation and bring answers in a timely manner for the ITER full-W divertor for the nuclear phase. Southwest Institute of Physics (SWIP) will have 10% of the first wall (FW) procurement package of the enhanced heat flux (EHF) type. The materials have been developed and characterized according to the ITER-grade material specifications, including vacuum hot pressing (VHP)-Be, CuCrZr alloy, and 316L(N)-IG forged blocks, and qualification testing of the VHP-Be tiles joining to the CuCrZr heat sink by hot isostatic pressing (HIP) has been carried out. Some Chinese universities have started to explore new grades of W materials, e.g., carbide or oxide dispersion strengthened fine grain W materials, and investigated their behavior under high heat loads.
