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Latest News
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.
Y. Gohar, M. Billone, H. Attaya, M. Sawan
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 19 | Number 3 | May 1991 | Pages 1457-1462
ITER | Proceedings of the Ninth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Oak Brook, Illinois, October 7-11, 1990) | doi.org/10.13182/FST91-A29546
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The U.S. Solid Breeder Blanket is designed to produce the necessary tritium required for the ITER operation and to operate at power reactor conditions as much as possible. Safety, low tritium inventory, reliability, flexibility cost, and minimum R&D requirements are the other design criteria. To satisfy these criteria, the produced tritium is recovered continuously during operation and the blanket coolant operates at low pressure. Beryllium multiplier material is used to control the solid-breeder temperature. Neutronics and thermal design analyses were performed in an integrated manner to define the blanket configuration. The reference parameters of ITER including the operating scenarios, the neutron wall loading distribution and the copper stabilizer are included in the design analyses. Several analyses were performed to study the impact of the reactor parameters, blanket dimensions, material characteristics, and heat transfer coefficient at the material interfaces on the blanket performance. The design analyses and the results from the different studies are summarized.