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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.
Paul E. Moroz
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 30 | Number 1 | September 1996 | Pages 40-49
Technical Paper | Experimental Device | doi.org/10.13182/FST96-A30761
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new type of device for plasma confinement that can be categorized as a stellarator-tokamak hybrid is proposed. This device features Wo systems of coils: the standard toroidal field coils of a tokamak and an additional system of simple coils to produce stellarator-like effects. A system of vertically inclined planar coils is used for numerical calculations, although other possible engineering solutions can be found. The system of poloidal field coils is required to compensate for the vertical magnetic field induced by the inclined coils. The possible modernization of a tokamak into such a hybrid is outlined. (The Phaedrus-T tokamak of the University of Wisconsin-Madison is kept in mind in the examples considered.) Because of the availability of two separate coil sets, the device considered is able to operate as a pure stellarator, as a pure tokamak, or as their hybrid when both coil systems are powered. The main unique features and regimes of operation would be expected to include smooth transition from the pure tokamak regime to the pure stellarator regime and back and to possibly operate the device in an alternating-current regime. Devices of this type combine the attractive properties of both tokamaks and stellarators. They feature inductive current, which is efficient for plasma heating and/or current drive, and good plasma confinement, typical of tokamaks. At the same time, they feature the prolonged or continuous plasma discharge operation typical of stellarators.