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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. Inutake
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 39 | Number 1 | January 2001 | Pages 49-55
Invited Review Lectures | doi.org/10.13182/FST01-A11963414
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Radial potential control by use of end-plate biasing in the GAMMA10 tandem mirror is very effective to suppress low-frequency fluctuations and to achieve a reactive plasma with hot ion temperature of up to 10 keV. In order to clarify effects of both radial electric field and its shear on low-frequency fluctuations, basic experiments have been carried out a small linear device, QT-U of Tohoku University, in which systematic control and precise measurements of radial potential profiles can be done. Flute-mode and drift-mode fluctuations appear in the radial region with steep density gradient. The observed flute-mode is identified as Kelvin-Helmholtz instability driven by strong E × B drift shear. The drift-mode fluctuations depend complicatedly on both radial electric field and its shear. The drift-mode is destabilized in the region of weakly negative electric field. In the strong Eτ region, the mode is suppressed, irrespective of its sign. This behavior agrees qualitatively with that observed in the ECH mode of GAMMA10. The drift-mode in the QT-U is clearly stabilized by the increase in net ion drift shear which is defined as the sum of E × B drift shear and ion diamagnetic drift shear.
