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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.
A. Pospieszczyk
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 53 | Number 2 | February 2008 | Pages 417-424
Technical Paper | Diagnostics | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-A1727
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A brief introduction into the spectroscopy of fusion plasmas is presented. Basic principles of the emission of ionic, atomic and molecular radiation will be explained and a survey of the effects, which lead to the population of the respective excited levels, will be given. The instrumentation, which is necessary for such measurements under the conditions in tokamak and stellarator plasmas, will be described. As illustrative examples for the wide wavelength range covered the derivation of core plasma parameters, transport properties, boundary temperatures and fluxes including their molecular composition will be given.
