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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.
A. Serikov, U. Fischer, R. Heidinger, H. Tsige-Tamirat, Y. Luo
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 53 | Number 1 | January 2008 | Pages 184-195
Technical Paper | Special Issue on Electron Cyclotron Wave Physics, Technology, and Applications - Part 2 | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-A1664
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) will use an electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH) system in the upper port of the device for plasma stabilization, heating, and current drive by injecting millimeter wave beams into the plasma chamber. The millimeter waves are transmitted to the plasma through long and narrow waveguide channels. The required plasma wall openings could result in enhanced neutron radiation loadings to the ECRH launcher and neighboring reactor components. The analyses aimed at proving that the shielding requirements and all related nuclear design limits specified by ITER can be met for the proposed ECRH launcher design concepts. The nuclear criteria included human safety issues, nuclear waste regulation aspects, and radiation shielding requirements. The proof was conducted by calculating the radiation loads to sensitive components such as the diamond window of the ECRH launcher, the vacuum vessel, and the superconducting magnets and assessing the potential radiation doses to work personnel during shutdown periods. Dedicated computational approaches were developed to handle the related neutron streaming and shielding problems on the basis of three-dimensional Monte Carlo calculations by the MCNP code. Suitable MCNP models of the launcher were generated by the automatic conversion of the underlying computer assisted design models using a newly developed interface program. The results of the analyses show that all radiation design limits can be safely met for the considered launcher and shield designs.