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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.
E. Tucker, J. Gilligan
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 26 | Number 4 | December 1994 | Pages 1265-1274
Technical Paper | First-Wall Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST94-A30311
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Energetic (> 10-keV) particles incident on divertor plate surfaces may penetrate the vapor shield formed under extremely high heat flux conditions (> 1010 W/m2). In this case, the total energy transmission factor f through the vapor shield can increase drastically, which leads to more surface damage. A one-dimensional time-dependent coupled magnetohydrodynamic-radiation transport code MAGFIRE, originally used in modeling the vapor shield development under a blackbody radiation source, has been modified to include a charged-particle source. The sources used to model a disruption are monoenergetic beams of electrons and/or deuter-ons with any given incident heat flux and energy per particle. An electron source (≤20 keV) will eventually (for times ≤10 µs) be completely absorbed by the vapor resulting in f converging to the same f (for times ≥100 µs) as an equivalent ion heat flux source. Results show that in fact all three sources converge (at ∼100 µs) to the same steady-state value of f for any given heat flux. Results also show that steady-state f decreases for increasing heat fluxes on a carbon surface. Non-steady-state f, however, depends on total incident beam energy fluence and electron energy per particle. The energetic electron spectrum incident on divertor plates during a disruption needs to be measured on large tokamaks so that reliable simulation can be done for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER)-like conditions.