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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.
John McLeod
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 11 | Number 3 | May 1987 | Pages 654-670
Technical Paper | KrF Laser | doi.org/10.13182/FST87-A25041
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Aurora is the Los Alamos short-pulse, high-power, krypton fluoride laser system. It is now conceived of as an end-to-end technology demonstration prototype for large-scale ultraviolet laser systems of interest for short wavelength, inertial confinement fusion (ICF) investigations. The system is designed to employ optical angular multiplexing and serial amplification by electron-beam-driven KrF laser amplifiers to deliver to ICF targets a stack of pulses with a duration of 5 ns containing several kilojoules at a wavelength of 248 nm. The optical system has been designed in two phases. The first phase carries only through the amplifier train and does not include a target chamber or any demultiplexing. During first-phase design, the system was conceived of as only an amplifier demonstration and not as an end-to-end system demonstration. The design concept for second-phase optics that provides demultiplexing and carries the laser light to target is presented. Discussion of the effects of first-stage design is obligatory. At the time of writing, detailed design has begun, but no hardware exists, except for the newly completed building. Some aspects of this discussion have benefited from the first fruits of detailed design, but others are still conceptual.