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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.
Lisa A. Haynes, J. P. Kelly, David N. Ruzic, Dennis Mueller, J. Kamperschroer
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 33 | Number 1 | January 1998 | Pages 74-83
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST98-A18
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The DEGAS neutral transport code is used in two separate cases to simulate the neutral beam box and vessel of the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR). For the neutral beam box simulation, known input parameters include the ion density at the source exit and the proportion of input gas that is converted to the high-energy atomic beam. The T0 current to the torus is (1.61 ± 0.03) × 1020 s-1, with the high-energy beam having a median energy above 95 keV. Corresponding results are found for the D0 current. In addition, the amount of gas reaching the torus, the pressure, and the flux and energy distributions of the ions and neutrals to the walls are found. For the tritium case, it is calculated that 92.4 ± 0.2% of the input tritium reaches the cryopanels, 6.64 ± 0.05% reaches the torus, and 1.0 ± 0.2% reaches the ion dump. In the second run, DEGAS was used to calculate the neutral atom flux and energy of particles incident on the walls of the vacuum vessel and the neutral pressure in the pump duct of TFTR during a typical supershot with a 50/50 mixture of deuterium-tritium. Output quantities are the current and energy to the bumper limiter and first wall. The total amount of tritium implanted in the vacuum vessel after 150 shots of 1-s duration is estimated to be 0.5 ± 0.1 g in the bumper limiter and 0.042 ± 0.023 g in the outer wall and pumping duct, which is well within the 5-g on-site inventory and the 2-g in-vessel inventory. The implications of these results are discussed.