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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.
T. Eich, A. Werner
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 53 | Number 3 | April 2008 | Pages 761-779
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-A1733
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The heat load due to plasma radiation is estimated for the plasma wall components of the stellarator Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X). A fully three-dimensional Monte Carlo code is used to simulate heating of first-wall components due to photon emission from the plasma. The plasma wall components can be described in a complex way with arbitrary shapes and orientation and flexible numerical representation. The volume radiation distribution is assumed to be described by poloidal symmetric and radially varying one-dimensional profiles aligned to the magnetic flux surfaces. A further example is given by a nonpoloidal symmetric radiation distribution following the five X point regions of the island divertor magnetic structure. Several realistic and artificial radiation profiles are chosen to investigate the local heat loads on an idealized plasma wall. The first detailed technical application of the code is the estimation of the local heat load on the Thomson scattering windows and on the inner surface of several vacuum ports of one half-module of the W7-X plasma vessel.
