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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.
A. B. Kukushkin, V. A. Rantsev-Kartinov, A. R. Terentiev
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 27 | Number 3 | April 1995 | Pages 325-328
Compact Torus (Field-Reversed Configuration, Spheromak) Concepts | doi.org/10.13182/FST95-A11947097
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Experimental results are presented which verify the possibility, formerly predicted,1 of the formation of a closed, spheromak-like magnetic configuration (SLMC) in a plasma focus discharge. The model is based on the self-generated transformation of a toroidal (i.e. azimuthal) field into a poloidal one. At its final stage, the SLMC takes the form of a squeezed spheromak, which includes a combined Z-v-pinch at its major axis, exhibiting a power density several orders of magnitude larger than that measured experimentally on a force-free flux-conserver-confined spheromak formed by helicity injection. The results suggest a possibility of further concentrating the plasma power density by means of compressing the SLMC-trapped plasma by the residual magnetic field.
