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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.
M. Nagata, Y. Kinugasa, T. Uyama
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 27 | Number 3 | April 1995 | Pages 387-390
Compact Torus (Field-Reversed Configuration, Spheromak) Concepts | doi.org/10.13182/FST95-A11947112
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A spheromak configuration consisting of bias flux surrounding a core region of closed flux surfaces has been successfully sustained in the Flux Amplification Compact Torus (FACT) device by DC/Coaxial helicity injection. In this experiment, the energy transfer efficiency is estimated to be about 30%. The relaxed configuration posseses a low q profile (1/3<q<1/2) whose shape implies that the current density is concentrated in the core and which is maintained by the process of MHD relaxation. The current conversion and rapid inward diffusion of the injected current is found to be significantly related to the n=1 helical deformation of the open field lines along the geometric axis. In this paper, we present some design parameters for the planned Helicity Injected Spherical Torus (HIST) which will permit a corresponding investigation to the above to be made for a tokamak.
