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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.
Kazuhisa Yuki, Makoto Kawamoto, Munehito Hattori, Koichi Suzuki, Ken-ichi Sunamoto, Akio Sagara
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 68 | Number 3 | October 2015 | Pages 715-719
Technical Note | Proceedings of TOFE-2014 | doi.org/10.13182/FST15-115
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this study, in order to enhance heat transfer performance of helium gas flow for divertor cooling, high thermal conductivity porous media that are copper-particles-sintered ones are introduced as the referential porous media. In order to predict the heat transfer performance of He gas impinging jet flow with the porous medium, nitrogen gas is used as the simulant of helium gas in the pressure range of 0.1 MPa to 0.8 MPa. With the porous medium, the particle introduced is highly size-adjusted one of 1000 μm in diameter and the porosity is almost 30 %. The maximum heat transfer performance is evaluated by numerically simulating temperature field in a heat transfer block based on the measured temperature data. The experiments prove that the heat transfer coefficient of N2 gas impinging jet flow with the porous medium is much higher than that of common impinging jet flow without the porous medium from the view point of not only flow velocity but also pumping power.
