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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.A. Ivanov, S.V. Murakhtin
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 39 | Number 1 | January 2001 | Pages 209-212
Poster Presentations | doi.org/10.13182/FST01-A11963443
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The neutral beam scattering diagnostic1 has been developed to measure the ion temperature of the target plasma in the Gas-Dynamic Trap (GDT) experiment. In the GDT, the target plasma density was about 1014 cm−3, the ion temperature was estimated from diamagnetic loops data combined with electron temperature obtained by Thompson scattering to be maximally ≈100 eV. The developed special diagnostic based on small angle scattering of neutral beam particles enables to perform more accurate measurements of the ion temperature. The beam of helium atoms is injected at the angle of 8° to the observation direction. The injection energy is 10 keV, the total equivalent beam current is 1A. The neutral particles are scattered on the plasma ions and enter the 45″ electrostatic analyzer. The ion temperature was inferred from the measured width of the energy distribution function of the scattered particles
This diagnostic was applied to measure temporal variation of the ion temperature during neutral beam heating. The electron temperature was simultaneously measured by Thomson scattering of a ruby laser light. The data will be used to estimate the energy balance of the ion component of the target plasma during neutral beam heating.
