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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.
K. Yoshikawa, H. Toku, K. Masuda, T. Mizutani, A. Nagafuchi, M. Imoto, T. Takamatsu, K. Nagasaki
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 44 | Number 2 | September 2003 | Pages 529-533
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Nonelectric Applications | doi.org/10.13182/FST03-A391
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A magnetron discharge was adopted in the inertial-electrostatic confinement (IEC) fusion device for drastic improvement of fusion reaction rate. With this discharge in the vicinity of the vacuum chamber, a substantial number of ions produced there are expected to have almost full energy corresponding to the applied voltage to the transparent IEC cathode under relatively low pressures compared with the conventional glow discharge. The magnetron discharge is found to occur even for the pressure of 0.07 mTorr (H2) in the present configuration of the experiment, compared with 5 mTorr in the glow discharge.
