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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.
Charles S. Vann, Erlan S. Bliss, James E. Murray
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 26 | Number 3 | November 1994 | Pages 833-836
National Ignition Facility | Proceedings of the Eleventh Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy New Orleans, Louisiana June 19-23, 1994 | doi.org/10.13182/FST94-A40258
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Accurate placement of hundreds of focused laser beams on target is necessary to achieve success in the National Ignition Facility (NIF). The current system requirement is ≤7 µrad error in output pointing and ≤1 mm error in focusing. To accommodate several system shots per day, a target alignment system must be able to align the target to chamber center, inject an alignment beam to represent each shot beam, and point and focus the alignment beams onto the target in about one hour. At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, we have developed a target alignment concept and built a prototype to validate the approach. The concept comprises three systems: the chamber center reference, target alignment sensor, and target alignment beams.