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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.
I. Maya, Hugh D. Campbell
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 135-140
Plasma Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A22857
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An analysis of the thermal balance of a fusioning plasma from a control system perspective has been performed. The requirements for stability and the response characteristics of the thermal balance have been evaluated. The results show that open-loop equilibria are characterized by restrictively narrow stable operating temperature regimes and generally poor system performance. Closed-loop proportional feedback using the fuel feedrate and injection energy can be used to extend the stable operating temperature regime and significantly improve the system response. Thus, high open-loop temperature overshoots without neutral beam injection can be reduced to acceptable levels at temperatures as low as 20 keV, with a decrease in the settling time to under 30 sec. With 75 keV injection energy, acceptable overshoot can be obtained at plasma temperatures as low as 10 keV, with the time-to-peak below 20 sec and settling times less than 30 sec. It is still difficult to simultaneously satisfy overshoot and speed of response requirements at low temperatures with low feedback fractions. Additional improvement is available using proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control.
