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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.
V. Basiuk, A. Bécoulet, T. Hutter, G. Martin, A. L. Pecquet, B. Saoutic
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 26 | Number 3 | November 1994 | Pages 222-226
Technical Paper | Experimental Device | doi.org/10.13182/FST94-A30324
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
During additional heating in Tore Supra [ion cyclotron resonance frequency (ICRF) or neutral beam injection], fast ion losses due to the toroidal field ripple were clearly measured by a set of graphite probes. This detector collects the flow of fast ions entering a vertical port and usually shows a maximum flux for ions originating from the vicinity of surface δ* = 0. During the monster sawteeth regime, achieved with ICRF, a remarkable phenomenon was observed: an ejection of fast ions that were not correlated with any measured magnetohydrodynamic activity. The radial distribution of these ions was quite different from the distribution usually observed exhibiting a peak located in the central section of the plasma. A new diagnostic is being constructed for measurement of the energy distribution of these ions, from 80 keV (energy of the neutral beam injected in Tore Supra) up to 1 MeV (expected during ICRF). The principle of the diagnostic is the identification of the ions through their energy by using their Larmor radius (ρ = 1.3 cm for 100 keV → ρ = 3.6 cm for 700 keV, B = 4T). The detector is made of a hollow graphite cylinder with a small entrance slot, located in a vertical port on the ion drift side. An array of six metallic collectors placed inside the graphite cylinder intercepts the ions. The current on each collector was estimated at 10 → 100 nA, during ICRF heating. The energy resolution of this diagnostic is expected to be ∼20 keV for the lowest energy range and 100 keV for the highest energy range. This type of elementary detector might be extrapolated for the measurements of alpha-particle losses in future deuterium-tritium experiments. It should also be suitable for studies of stochastic ripple diffusion.