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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.
Marco Riva, Christian Di Sanzo, Mohamed Abdou, Mahmoud Youssef
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 72 | Number 3 | October 2017 | Pages 469-477
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1333853
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Breeding blankets with integrated first wall are one of the most critical components of nuclear fusion reactors. Blankets breeding zones are characterized by steep nuclear heating gradients due to the exothermic nuclear reaction 6Li(n, )T and the high intensity neutron flux in the proximity of the first wall. Non-uniformity in nuclear heating can generate sharp temperature gradients that deeply affect material properties. This conceptual study explores an original way to flatten nuclear heating profiles by proposing a blanket characterized by layers of different 6Li enrichment in the breeder region while maximizing Tritium Breeding Ratio (TBR) and power generation. Two types of fusion blanket are studied: (1) Helium Cooled Ceramic Reflector (HCCR) and (2) Dual Coolant Lead Lithium (DCLL). For HCCR, it is found in the optimal design case, that the power peak-to-average can be reduced by 47.85%, 42.45% and 54.13% in the front, middle and back channel respectively when compared to the reference design. On the other side, we found that this method of profile flattening is not appealing for DCLL, under the geometrical configuration and material selection in this particular blanket design, since most of nuclear heating is caused by photon heat deposition.