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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.
F. Carre, Z. Tilliette, J. Remoleur, E. Proust
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 1101-1106
Blanket and First Wall Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A23005
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the frame of the recent CEA studies aiming at the evaluation and the comparison of various candidate blanket concepts in view of their possible extrapolation to the commercial power reactor, the present work examines the potential interest of a 15 MPa pressurized water cooled Li17Pb83 blanket. After a brief presentation of the main reactor parameters, the body of the paper is devoted to the engineering optimization of the blanket arrangement, in terms of tritium breeding (minimization of the water content), coolant manifolding (minimum coolant cross section, minimum number of connections and easy access for maintenance) and adaptation to the steep power and irradiation gradients, typical of Li17Pb83 and crucial for a power reactor. Poloidal cooling direction, long heated length and segmentation into the radial direction (breeder rows) provide some answers to these preoccupations and could be recommended for the next step liquid blanket studies, in order to anticipate the requirements of the commercial reactor.
