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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.
Imre Pázsit
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 30 | Number 3 | December 1996 | Pages 326-336
Technical Paper | Plasma Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST96-A30735
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Fluctuation analysis of various physical parameters, mainly neutron flux or other radiation, has long been used for the diagnostics of both fission and fusion reactors. However, it appears that there has been relatively little exchange of information regarding research in the two fields. Some noise diagnostic methods used in fission reactors that may have some relevance for or resemblance to fusion plasma diagnostics are described, and this may contribute to the exchange between the two areas. An example is given to illustrate the possibility of such a transfer of experience. Namely, a method is described, taken from experience with fission reactor technology, that has been suggested for fusion applications. The method is used in general for nonintrusive determination of the correlation length of density fluctuations by spectral and correlation analysis. It can be applied to the analysis of plasma soft X rays for investigation of turbulence and magnetohydrodynamic effects. The proposed method has been partially tested on data from the Joint European Torus (JET) tokamak.