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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.
Shuhei Nogami, Wenhai Guan, Akira Hasegawa, Makoto Fukuda
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 72 | Number 4 | November 2017 | Pages 673-679
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1347463
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The thermal and fatigue properties and the irradiation hardening of the potassium (K) doped tungsten (W) rods (20 mm in diameter) developed for fusion reactor divertor applications were investigated, and they were compared with the conventional hot-rolled W plates, which were previously reported. A part of the fatigue life of conventional hot-rolled W plate was newly obtained in this work. The K-doped W rod showed a few percent lower thermal conductivity than the conventional hot-rolled W plates. However, those values may meet the requirements of the ITER divertor application. The fatigue life at 500°C of the K-doped W rod was similar to the pure W plates at higher strain, whereas longer fatigue life of the K-doped W rod was observed at lower strain. The recrystallized K-doped W rod showed longer fatigue life at 500°C than the recrystallized pure W plates. The irradiation hardening level of the K-doped W rod was similar to the pure W plate after the irradiation up to 3 dpa at 500°C. Based on these evaluations of this work, the K-doped W rod in this work has similar or better properties than the conventional hot-rolled W plates under these particular test conditions though further evaluation and producing larger rods are desirable for the actual design and fabrication of the divertor.