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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. A. Snipes, N. Basse, P. Bonoli, C. Boswell, E. Edlund, A. Fasoli, R. S. Granetz, L. Lin, Y. Lin, R. Parker, M. Porkolab, J. Sears, V. Tang, S. Wukitch
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 51 | Number 3 | April 2007 | Pages 437-450
Technical Paper | Alcator C-Mod Tokamak | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1431
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Energetic particle physics is studied in Alcator C-Mod in reactor relevant regimes with high density and equilibrated electron and ion temperatures. Stable Alfvén eigenmodes are excited with low-power active magnetohydrodynamic antennas in the absence of a significant energetic particle tail to directly measure the damping rate of the modes. Stable toroidal Alfvén eigenmode (TAE) damping rates between 0.5% < / < 4.5% have been observed in diverted and limited plasmas. Alfvén eigenmodes are destabilized with high-power hydrogen minority ion cyclotron radio frequency (ICRF) heating (PICRF < 6 MW) in lower-density plasmas in the current rise and in relatively high-density ([bar]ne < 2.5 × 1020 m-3) H-mode plasmas, which creates an energetic hydrogen ion tail with calculated energies up to 400 keV. Low toroidal mode number (n < 4) unstable modes are observed in the current rise with magnetic pickup coils at the wall and phase contrast imaging density fluctuation measurements in the core. Observations of energetic particle modes or TAEs that decrease in frequency and mode number with time up to a large sawtooth collapse indicate that fast particles play a role in stabilizing sawteeth. Alfvén eigenmodes can also be used as diagnostics to precisely constrain the q profile and provide a qualitative measure of the fast particle distribution time evolution.