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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.
B. K. Shukla
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 65 | Number 1 | January 2014 | Pages 145-153
Lecture | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-647
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The 82.6 GHz/200 kW and 42 GHz/500 kW electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH) systems will be used in Tokamak SST-1 to carry out preionization and start-up experiments at 3.0- and 1.5-T operation. The 82.6-GHz gyrotron system has been tested for continuous waves (1000-s duration) using a conventional high-voltage power supply and for pulsed operation (200 kW for 1 s) using a regulated high-voltage power supply. The 42-GHz ECRH system is a pulsed system (500 ms), which will be used to carry out preionization and start-up experiments at 1.5 T (fundamental harmonic) on SST-1 and at 0.75 T (second harmonic) on Tokamak Aditya. The circular corrugated waveguide-based transmission line system contains two waveguide switches: one to test the gyrotron on a dummy load or the tokamak and the second switch to launch the ECRH power, either in SST-1 or in Aditya. The 42-GHz system has been tested on a dummy load, and the gyrotron delivers 500-kW power at beam voltage ∼49 kV and beam current ∼18 A. The output of the gyrotron is Gaussian (TEM00 mode) with mode purity >99%. The system is commissioned on both tokamaks (SST-1 and Aditya) to launch power in any tokamak.
