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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.
S. Keniley, D. Curreli
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 1 | January 2017 | Pages 93-102
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST16-117
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We present an innovative coupled Boltzmann–binary collision approximation (BCA) method for the simulation of the near-wall plasma in the presence of a material-releasing wall. The method is based on a full-f multispecies Boltzmann solver for the plasma (charged and neutral species) coupled to a modification of the classical BCA code TRIDYN. Both the plasma ions and the impurities are treated as Boltzmann kinetic species, allowing high resolution even at very disparate densities, particle fluxes, drift velocities, and energy fluxes. From the distribution functions, all the fluid moments (density, heat flux, etc.) and the net and gross erosion rates are derived. An example of calculation of a helium plasma facing a beryllium wall is reported, showing the evolution of the phase-spaces of ions, neutrals, and material impurities in the near-wall region at nominal ITER conditions.