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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.
D. G. Gritton, D. J. Christie, R. W. Holloway, B. T. Merritt, J. A. Oicles, K. Whitham, R. B. Wilcox
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 955-960
Inertial Confinement Fusion | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A22982
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Novette is a large, two beam, two wavelength laser facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The Novette laser projected performance exceeds that of the 20 arm Shiva laser and the frequency multiplying capability provides more efficient target interaction. Novette is comprised of two arms of the Nova laser. New designs allow these two arms to exceed the performance of the 20 arms of Shiva. Assembling these two arms on an accelerated schedule allowed the experimental program to continue with minimum interruption. The laser has been operational since January 1983. More efficient laser amplifiers allowed the performance to be achieved with half the capacitor bank used on Shiva. The pulse power for Novette uses high-density capacitors, instrumented dual ignitron switches, 100 KVA power supplies and a control system based on LSI/11 Front End Processors (FEP's) and fiberoptic links. The bank contains 11 MJ of stored energy at 22 KV. Construction of the pulse power system took a year. The laser was completed in about 15 months. This paper is a summary of the pulse power systems for Novette; the flashlamp power system, the pulsers for the various optical shutters and the pulse power control system.