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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.
D. B. Montgomery
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 21 | Number 3 | May 1992 | Pages 1893-1897
Magnetic | doi.org/10.13182/FST92-A29995
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The ITER Magnetics R&D plan developed during the Conceptual Design Activity identified the need to build both central solenoid (CS) and toroidal field (TF) model coils. In the CDA plan both model sets were circular. The CS model coil would have an inner diameter of 2 m, a field of 13 T and no case, whereas the TF model coils would have a 4 m diameter, a field of 11 T field, and a surrounding case. The U.S. has proposed instead that the TF model coil be down sized and made noncircular, so that a 2 m x 3.5 m model can be combined with the CS model coils, still allowing full simulation of the ITER TF stresses. This smaller assembly of coils, which would use full-scale conductors, would be less expensive to build, and would be more suitable for conducting an extensive set of cyclic extended performance tests. To compensate for the loss of large coil fabrication with the down-sizing of the TF model coil, the U.S. has propose that a full-scale ITER TF magnet double pancake, or two layers of a nested shell concept, be fabricated from production conductor, and that the coil element and its structure be cold tested in a prototypical “Q/A Production Test.”