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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.
Robert Kin-Yan Wong, Edward C. Morse
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 27 | Number 4 | July 1995 | Pages 364-376
Technical Paper | Plasma Heating System | doi.org/10.13182/FST95-A30357
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A quasi-optical electron cyclotron maser operating at 28 GHz is studied for applications in heating fusion plasmas. Large spherical mirrors with a small axial aperture and coupling mirror form the open resonator. In the experiment, both the large mirror and coupling mirror are adjusted to select a preferential mode of operation. This is found to improve the efficiency of interaction. Maximum efficiency was observed with a 2.5-A, 60-kV electron beam, with efficiency declining at higher currents. Water calorimetry was used to measure an efficiency of 10%. A photon-drag detector indicated higher peak power levels than those measured with calorimetry. The high-efficiency mode was due to the overlap of two cavity eigenmodes TEMn00 and TEM(n−1)10 (cylindrical notation) and to beam trapping effects that caused a better match between the beam footprint and the electric field profile than in other configurations tested.
