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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.
Dong Won Lee, Bong Geun Hong, Yonghee Kim, Wang Ki In, Kyung Ho Yoon
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 52 | Number 4 | November 2007 | Pages 844-848
Technical Paper | First Wall, Blanket, and Shield | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1597
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Through a consideration of the requirements for a DEMO-relevant blanket concept, Korea (KO) has proposed a He Cooled Molten Lithium (HCML) blanket with Ferritic Steel (FS) as a structural material in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) program. The design and WKH performance of the KO HCML Test Blanket Module (TBM) are introduced in this paper. It uses He as a coolant at an inlet temperature of 300°C and an outlet temperature up to 406°C and Li is used as a tritium breeder by considering its potential advantages. Two layers of graphite are inserted as a reflector in the breeder zone to increase the Tritium Breeding Ratio (TBR) and the shielding performances. A 3-D Monte Carlo analysis is performed with the MCCARD code for the neutronics and the total TBM power is designed to be 0.675 MW at a normal heat flux from the plasma side. From the analysis results with CFX-10 for the thermal-hydraulics, the He cooling path is determined and it shows that the maximum temperature of the first wall does not exceed 550 °C at the structural materials and the coolant velocities are 50 m/sec and 25~32 m/sec at the first wall and breeding zone, respectively. The obtained temperature data is used in the thermal-mechanical analysis with ANSYS-10. The maximum von Mises equivalent stress of the first wall is 2540 MPa and the maximum deformation of it is 1.3 mm.