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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.
Satoshi Ito, Hidetoshi Hashizume
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 68 | Number 2 | September 2015 | Pages 428-432
Technical Paper | Proceedings of TOFE-2014 | doi.org/10.13182/FST15-104
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper discusses thermal design of a segmented high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnet depending on geometry of HTS conductors, cooling system (indirect cooling or partial forced flow cooling), cooling techniques and joint resistance. For the purpose, three-dimensional heat conduction analysis was carried out with a finite element code, modeling geometry and operating condition of helical coils in a helical fusion reactor, FFHR as an example. In this analysis, liquid neon was assumed to be used as a coolant at an operating temperature of 25 K. As a heat removal technique for the joint, cooling system of a cryogenic liquid coolant with metal porous media has been proposed and it was also modeled in the heat conduction analysis. The numerical results showed that stainless steel jacket and a low thermal conductivity insulator determine temperature distribution and any cooling techniques cannot contribute to prevent the temperature rise when joint resistance increases in the case of the indirect cooling system. On the other hand, a high performance cooling technique such as metal porous media-inserted channel is effective to reduce temperature rise in the partial force cooling system.