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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. Bickford Hooper, James H. Hammer, Cris W. Barnes, Juan C. Fernández, Fred J. Wysocki
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 29 | Number 2 | March 1996 | Pages 191-205
Technical Paper | Experimental Device | doi.org/10.13182/FST96-A30706
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The results of spheromak experiments are reexamined in light of the hypothesis that the core energy confinement is considerably better than the global confinement and that it extrapolates favorably with magnetic Reynolds number S. The data in decaying spheromaks are found to be consistent with the hypothesis and with magnetic fluctuations scaling as S−1/2 and determining the electron thermal conductivity. No conclusion is drawn from the data for sustained spheromaks, indicating the importance of a new experiment to determine core energy confinement while helicity is injected. The characteristics of such an experiment are discussed, including the importance of using modern vacuum and wall-conditioning techniques and of minimizing magnetic field errors.
