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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.
J. A. Leuer, S. Ejima, F. J. Helton, J. C. Wesley
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 8 | Number 1 | July 1985 | Pages 1676-1681
Magnet Engineering | Proceedings of the Sixth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (San Francisco, California, March 3-7, 1985) | doi.org/10.13182/FST85-A40001
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A conceptual design of a poloidal field coil system for an ignition and long pulse burn experiment is presented. The coil is located internal to the toroidal field coil and immediately adjacent to the plasma chamber. The advantages this system offers over alternate designs are: sufficient volt-sec to initiate and sustain plasma current for a 300 sec burn, plasma configurations with MHD beta limits in excess of 10%, and the operational flexibility to accommodate a number of different plasma configurations including diverted discharges. For equal ignition margin a divertor configuration requires a larger toroidal field and lower plasma current than a limiter configuration. Power requirements are modest, and technology developments required for construction are within the present state-of-the-art.