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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.
L. Bromberg, D.R. Cohn, E. Bobrov, N. Diatchenko, R.J. LeClaire, J.E. Meyer, J.E.C. Williams
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 264-269
Alternate Fuels | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A22879
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
DD-DT operation could provide a significant reduction in tritium breeding requirements in high field tokamak reactors without requiring very large increases in reactor size or plasma beta. Operation with the tritium breeding requirement is of particular interest. The reduced tritium breeding requirement makes possible the use of blanket designs which might be difficult to implement in a DT reactor (for example, LiAl2O3 blankets). The reduced blanket requirement could also be used for excess tritium production. Tradeoffs between tritium breeding and plasma performance requirements are investigated. Illustrative design features are developed for devices using both resistive magnets and superconducting magnets. Parameters for the device with superconducting magnets are BT = 7 T, β = 0.063, R = 9.6 m, a = 2.4 m, γ = 0.8, and Pwall = 2.2 MW/m2.
