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ANS Student Conference 2025
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Fusion Science and Technology
February 2025
Latest News
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.
W.R. Baker, G. Marchiori, S. Peruzzo, P. Sonato, P. Zaccaria, G. Zollino
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 30 | Number 3 | December 1996 | Pages 764-768
Plasma-Facing Components: Analysis and Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST96-A11963027
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The inner surface of the RFX vacuum vessel is protected by a first wall made up by 2016 polycrystalline graphite tiles. Due to the dimensions of the largest ports, inspection, maintenance and replacement of the first wall components can be carried out only by a remote handling system. Inspections performed during the first four years of operation showed evidence of some plasma surface interaction not only on the graphite tiles, but also on small portions of the vacuum vessel in the interspace between two tiles. Erosion phenomena were observed in the area which corresponds to the insulated poloidal gaps of the stabilizing shell that surrounds the vacuum vessel. New graphite tiles to be installed in these regions were designed, with a shape which completely closes the interspace in the poloidal direction between the tiles. During the last shut down, in 1995, all the 112 tiles were successfully replaced by means of the remote handling system.
