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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.
C. Z. Cheng
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 18 | Number 3 | November 1990 | Pages 443-454
Alpha Particles in Fusion Research | Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST90-A29280
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The NOVA-K code is employed to study the effects of alpha particles on two types of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) modes: (a) the stabilization of ideal MHD internal modes and the excitation of resonant internal modes, and (b) the alpha-particle destabilization of toroidicity-induced Alfvén eigenmodes (TAEs) via transit resonances. Analytical theories are also presented to help explain the NOVA-K results. The trapped alpha particles are found to destabilize the n = 1 internal mode and lower the total beta threshold. The circulating alpha particles can strongly destabilize TAE modes via inverse Landau damping associated with the spatial gradient of the alpha-particle pressure.
