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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.
L. Barleon, L. Bühler, K.J. Mack, R. Stieglitz, B.F. Picologlou, T.Q. Hua, C.B. Reed
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 21 | Number 3 | May 1992 | Pages 2197-2203
Blanket Shield and Neutronic | doi.org/10.13182/FST92-A30045
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In designing a self-cooled liquid metal blanket based on the poloidal-toroidal flow concept, the magnitude of the MHD pressure drop and the character of the velocity distribution in the first wall coolant channels, that result from 3-dimensional MHD effects associated with the required right angle bends in the coolant flow, represent important design issues. To address these issues and to verify the relevant models used in the design, a joint MHD-experiment was conducted by Argonne National Laboratory (AND and Kernforschungszen-trum Karlsruhe (KfK). The test article was designed and built at ANL, and the experiments were performed at KfK's MEKKA facility using a 3.6 Tesla superconducting solenoid magnet and a eutectic sodium potassium alloy working fluid. In the experiments, detailed voltage and pressure distributions on the duct walls and voltage distributions within the liquid metal were measured under a variety of Hartmann numbers and interaction parameters. Representative results from these measurements are presented and compared to analytical predictions valid for very high interaction parameters (inertialess flow). Results indicate that deviation between analysis and experiment is confined to the immediate vicinity of the right angle sharp corner and that, for fusion blanket conditions, the 3-dimensional pressure drop in the radial-toroidal bend of an electrically separated single channel is small compared with the pressure drop of the radial flow.