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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. A. Niemer, J. G. Gilligan, C. D. Croessmann
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 26 | Number 3 | November 1994 | Pages 546-550
Fusion Material and Plasma-Facing Component | Proceedings of the Eleventh Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy New Orleans, Louisiana June 19-23, 1994 | doi.org/10.13182/FST94-A40214
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The purpose of this research was to extend the theoretical and experimental knowledge of runaway electron damage-impact-bombardment on plasma facing components and materials in magnetic fusion devices. The emphasis of this work involved computational modeling and experimental studies to investigate runaway electron energy deposition and thermal response in plasma facing materials. The goals were: 1) to develop a computational model to study and analyze runaway election damage, 2) to characterize runaway electron parameters, and 3) to perform experiments to analyze runaway electron damage. These goals were accomplished by first assembling the PTA code package. PTA is a unique application of PATRAN, the Integrated TIGER Series (ITS), and ABAQUS for modeling high energy electron impact on magnetic fusion materials and components. The PTA code package provides a three-dimensional, time dependent, computational code package which predicts material response from runaway bombardment under most runaway conditions (i.e., electron energy, incident angle, energy density, and deposition time). As part of this research, PTA was used to study energy deposition and material response in several design applications, to analyze damaged material, and to analyze several experiments. Runaway electron characterization was determined through parametric studies, analysis of damaged materials, and analysis of experimental results. Characterization provided information on electron energy, incident angle, current, deposition time, and volume of material impacted by runaway electrons. Finally an experiment was performed on the Advanced Toroidal Facility (ATF) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to study runaway electron damage. The experiment provided information on the runaway electron energy and current in ATF, as well as supplemented the existing experimental knowledge of runaway electron damage.