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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.
Dirk Reiser, Abdessamad Mekkaoui
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 63 | Number 1 | May 2013 | Pages 237-240
doi.org/10.13182/FST13-A16914
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A global drift-fluid model is employed to study plasma discharges in linear devices including self-consistent treatment of electric fields. Numerical results on plasma rotation and turbulent scales are found to be very similar to experimental observations. Also a pronounced intermittent plasma transport in radial direction is observed for particular conditions. Extended filaments are expelled from the plasma column. In the simulations numerical probes have been implemented for detailed statistical analysis of the plasma fluctuations suitable for comparison with experimental data. In this contribution particular attention is paid to the impact of the plasma source on the intermittencies in the plasma column. It is found that even slight modifications in the shape of the plasma source can strongly change the plasma dynamics.
