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Latest News
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.
P. Norajitra, W. W. Basuki, L. Spatafora, U. Stegmaier
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 66 | Number 1 | July-August 2014 | Pages 266-271
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-739
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A modular He-cooled divertor concept for DEMO has been pursued at KIT with the goal of reaching 10 MW/m2. The reference design uses small tungsten-based cooling fingers of about 20 mm in size. They consist of a tungsten tile as a thermal shield that is to be connected to a thimble heat sink structure from W–1 wt% La2O3 (WL10) tungsten alloy. The lower boundary of the divertor operating temperature window is predicted by the ductile-to-brittle temperature and the upper boundary by the recrystallization temperature of WL10 material, currently assumed at 600°C and 1300°C, respectively. The important requirements for the joint between the W tile and WL10 thimble are (a) functioning as a crack stopper, (b) resisting a high operating temperature of about 1200°C, and (c) using low-activation material as an interlayer. Previously used PdNi brazing material has been successfully tested at a brazing temperature of about 1270°C. The mock-ups produced in this way are sufficient for the HHF tests without neutrons. In a further step to approach the DEMO requirements with higher demands, the use of low-activating titanium with a melting point of 1668°C as bonding material was examined both for brazing and for diffusion welding of tungsten parts. This paper reports on the first successful test results of both high-temperature brazing and diffusion bonding techniques.