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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.
Robert R. Peterson
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 13 | Number 2 | February 1988 | Pages 279-289
Technical Paper | Heavy-Ion Fusion | doi.org/10.13182/FST88-A25105
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The limits on the cavity gas density required for beam propagation and condensation times for material vaporized by target explosions can determine the maximum repetition rate of heavy-ion fusion (HIF) driven reactors. If the ions are ballistically focused onto the target, the cavity gas must have a density below roughly 3 × 1012cm-3 at the time of propagation; other propagation schemes may allow densities as high as 1 Torr or more. In some reactor designs, several kilograms of material may be vaporized from the target chamber walls by target-generated X rays, raising the average density in the cavity to 3 × 1018 cm-3 or more. A one-dimensional combined radiation hydrodynamics and vaporization and condensation computer code has been used to simulate the vaporization and condensation of material in the target chambers of HIF reactors. Repetition rates in excess of 1 Hz are possible in the three types of target chambers studied. Means of increasing allowable repetition rates are discussed.
