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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.
M. Murakami, J. M. Park, T. C. Luce, M. R. Wade, R. M. Hong
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 54 | Number 4 | November 2008 | Pages 994-1002
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-A1915
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Off-axis neutral beam (NB) current drive (CD) (NBCD) has the potential to supply substantial off-axis CD for the demonstration steady-state, Advanced Tokamak scenarios. A modification of the two existing DIII-D NB beamlines is proposed to allow off-axis CD with NB injection (NBI) vertically steered to drive current as far off axis as half the plasma radius. The profile and magnitude of the driven current is calculated using the NUBEAM Monte Carlo module in the TRANSP and ONETWO transport codes. When the beam is injected in the same direction as the toroidal field, off-axis CD of [approximately equal to]45 kA/MW is calculated at normalized radius (square root of the toroidal flux), = 0.5 with full-width at half-maximum of 0.45 in . The dimensionless CD efficiency is comparable or somewhat better than that for electron cyclotron CD (ECCD) at the same location and plasma parameters. The efficiency stays nearly constant in going from on-axis to off-axis CD. The localization and magnitude of the off-axis NBCD are sensitive to the alignment of the NBI relative to the helical pitch of the magnetic field lines and thus to the direction of the toroidal field and plasma current. The driven current is still localized off axis for fast ion diffusivities up to 1 m2/s. The calculations show that the off-axis NBCD can supply much of the off-axis CD for the steady-state scenarios under consideration, leaving ECCD for fine-tuning of the current profile and real-time control.
