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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.
Ubaldo R. Carretta, Ettore Minardi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 14 | Number 2 | September 1988 | Pages 320-328
Technical Paper | Plasma Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST88-A20264
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The conditions for the existence and accessibility of ignited or subignited deuterium-tritium states are discussed in terms of the performance of the thermonuclear device in tritiumless discharges. The discussion includes the effects of the thermal instability of both the marginally igniting states and the nonstationary states in the start-up phase. These effects are an integral part of the problem of the accessibility to ignition under reliable conditions. Typical examples taken from the next generation of igniting tokamaks are discussed. The necessity of allowing sufficient excursion of the plasma column for a stable drive to ignition by feedback on the vertical field is underlined.
