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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.
X. N. Hao, J. J. Sha, J. X. Dai, J. Li, J. Lv, X. L. Yang, H. K. Yoon
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 66 | Number 1 | July-August 2014 | Pages 163-170
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-761
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Tungsten and CuCrZr alloy have been considered as the potential candidates for armor and heat sinking materials of plasma-facing components (PFCs) because of their attractive mechanical, nuclear and physical properties. However, due to the incompatibility of the coefficient of thermal expansion and the elastic properties between the W and the Cu alloy as well as the nonhomogeneous temperature distribution in PFCs, one of the crucial issues is the generation of thermal stresses in W/CuCrZr PFCs on cooling either during fabrication or during operation of a fusion reactor. In the current work, the thermo-mechanical analysis of W/Cu-alloy joints, where a compliant OFHC-Cu with different thickness was used as an interlayer, was carried out by using finite element method (FEM) under various conditions including the fabrication process and steady and transient operation.
