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This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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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.
Ahmed M. Hassanein
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 8 | Number 1 | July 1985 | Pages 1735-1741
Plasma Heating, Impurity Control, and Fueling | Proceedings of the Sixth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (San Francisco, California, March 3-7, 1985) | doi.org/10.13182/FST85-A40011
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A comprehensive three-dimensional Monte Carlo computer code, Ion Transport in Materials and Compounds (ITMC), has been developed to study in detail the surface related phenomena that affect the amount of sputtered atoms and back-scattered ions and their angular and energy dependence. A number of important factors that can significantly affect the sputtering behavior of a surface can be studied in detail, such as having different surface properties and composition than the bulk and synergistic effects due to surface segregation of alloys. These factors can be important in determining the lifetime of fusion reactor first walls and limiters. The ITMC Code is based on Monte Carlo methods to track down the path and the damage produced by charged particles as they slow down in solid metal surfaces or compounds. The major advantages of the ITMC code are its flexibility and ability to use and compare all existing models for energy losses, all known interatomic potentials, and to use different materials and compounds with different surface and bulk composition to allow for dynamic surface composition changes. There is good agreement between the code and available experimental results without using adjusting parameters for the energy losses mechanisms. The ITMC Code is highly optimized, very fast to run and easy to use.