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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.
Louis A. Rosocha, Kenneth Bruce Riepi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 11 | Number 3 | May 1987 | Pages 576-611
Technical Paper | KrF Laser | doi.org/10.13182/FST87-A25037
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Krypton-fluoride lasers have been shown to be promising candidates for inertial confinement fusion (ICF) drivers. These lasers can be effectively pumped with electrical discharges or energetic electron beams (e beams). With discharge pumping, the laser aperture is limited in size to a few centimetres (at atmospheric pressure) because of discharge instabilities that cause a homogeneous discharge to degenerate into arcs. Much larger aperture lasers can be pumped using relativistic e beams. At Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), we are constructing high-energy e-beam-driven KrF lasers with apertures as large as 1 m2 for the ICF program. In designing and building these lasers, a number of physics and engineering issues related to large area electron guns (e guns) must be addressed. Among these issues are the following: generation of the relativistic e beams, transport of the e beams into the laser gas, and design and construction of pulsed power devices for driving the e guns. Cold cathode e guns are found to be useful sources for driving these large volume KrF lasers. Presented are some brief background comments on cold-cathode sources. We will also discuss the cathode current emission mechanisms, basic beam transport considerations, pulsed power devices for powering these e guns, and measured e-gun performance. Particular emphasis is given to practical considerations related to the two main LANL KrF/ICF laser systems: the 10-kJ Aurora system and the 100-kJ power amplifier module design.
