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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.
Tadas Kaliatka, Eugenijus Uspuras, Algirdas Kaliatka
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 72 | Number 2 | August 2017 | Pages 176-187
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1320496
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An event of water coolant ingress into the vacuum vessel (VV) is one of the most important events leading to severe consequences in nuclear fusion reactors. The ingress of coolant to the VV could appear due to coolant pipe rupture of in-vessel components. Any damage of in-vessel components could lead to water ingress and may lead to pressure increase and possible damage of the VV. Therefore, it is important to understand thermohydraulic processes in the VV during the ingress of coolant event (ICE) to prevent overpressurization of the VV. This technical note updates the developed Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) model in accordance with the experience gained from the modeling of ICE experiments. Calculation results using the updated model are compared with the results obtained using an older model and the results of other researchers. The calculation results of the updated W7-X model show a much smaller pressure increase rate in the VV compared to the old model. In order to find the maximal area of partial break, which increases pressure in the VV but does not reach burst disk activation pressure (no steam release from the VV to the environment), the best-estimate approach is provided. The results of the analysis reveal that partial break using the updated W7-X model could be much bigger than what was considered before.