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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.
Chungpin Liao, Mujid S. Kazimi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 21 | Number 3 | May 1992 | Pages 1845-1851
Plasma-Facing Component | doi.org/10.13182/FST92-A29987
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The divertor technology has become the focus of concern for prospective steady state tokamak reactors. The imposed heat flux and particle flux conditions cast doubt on the feasibility of any solid surface divertor. The aim of this work is to evaluate the feasibility of the existing concepts of liquid metal divertors from both the physics and engineering points of view. It is found that lithium is not a favorable liquid metal due to the large tritium inventory that may develop in the form of solid hydride LiH. Gallium, on the other hand, does not form hydride within the temperature range of interest, and hence is considered a favorable material. Slowly flowing thin film and pool type divertors are found to be undesirable owing to the possible blistering erosion and resulting plasma contamination. The popular concept of self-cooled liquid metal film divertor suffers mainly from the linear MHD instability, in addition to other complicating factors such as the variation of the liquid metal electric property, dynamics of halo current, and the compatibility problem of insulator coating with the liquid metal. The liquid gallium droplet curtain divertor is evaluated to be the most feasible. However, unless an effective helium pumping scheme can be developed, the goal of controling the neutral recycling coefficient by liquid metal divertors can not be accomplished.