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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.
Seungil Park, Jinhyun Jeong, Won Namkung, Moo-Hyun Cho, Young S. Bae, Won-Soon Han, Hyung-Lyeol Yang
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 55 | Number 1 | January 2009 | Pages 56-63
Technical Paper | Electron Cyclotron Emission and Electron Cyclotron Resonance Heating | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A4053
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An 84-GHz electron cyclotron heating (ECH) system has been installed to assist plasma start-up by preionization in the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) device. The KSTAR 84-GHz ECH system consists of a 500-kW gyrotron, a transmission line, and an antenna system. The wave power is transmitted from the gyrotron to the antenna through an evacuated corrugated circular waveguide of 31.75-mm inner diameter and six miter bends, which include a pair of polarizer miter bends for polarization control. The maximum permitted vacuum pressure without radio-frequency (rf) breakdown in the 31.75-mm waveguide at 84 GHz, 500 kW was calculated to be ~0.1 torr. The pumping time to reach the vacuum pressure of 1 × 10-3 torr in the KSTAR ECH system was ~2 h by two turbomolecular pumps. The transmission efficiency of ~93% from the output of the mirror optical unit to the torus window was measured using a low-power rf source. The wave polarization by a pair of polarizer miter bends with grooved mirrors was tested using the low-power system, and it showed good agreement with numerical calculations. In this paper, we present the design and commissioning results of the KSTAR 84-GHz transmission line.
