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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.
Takuya Goto, Daisuke Ninomiya, Yuichi Ogawa, Ryoji Hiwatari, Yoshiyuki Asaoka, Kunihiko Okano
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 52 | Number 4 | November 2007 | Pages 953-957
Technical Paper | Inertial Fusion Technology: Drivers and Advanced Designs | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1617
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The design of a laser fusion reactor with a dry wall chamber has been carried out. According to a simple point model calculation, sufficient pellet gain (G > 100) can be achieved with the injection energy of 400kJ under relatively conservative parameters ( = 2, c = 0.05, h = 0.2). Assuming the pulse heat load limit of a dry wall to be 2J/cm2, chamber radius of R = 5.64m is achievable. 1-D thermal analysis also supports the feasibility of this design. Then a medium scale plant (400MWe electric output) can be designed with moderate construction cost, which suits for the first-step reactor, if the laser repetition rate can be increased to 30 Hz. Since laser fusion reactors have flexibility in changing its output, this design enables them to be in flexible use according to the time-varying electric demand as the present fossil fuel power plants. This design is remarkable because it gives a new property to the fusion reactors.
