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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. H. Anderson, J. G. Oakley, M. A. Coil, R. Bonazza, R. R. Peterson
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 39 | Number 2 | March 2001 | Pages 828-833
Chamber Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST01-A11963342
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Many inertial confinement fusion (ICF) reactor designs incorporate a bank of cooling tubes as the first structural wall. These tubes provide important functions such as heat transfer and fuel breeding and must endure the cyclic impact of the shock waves formed from reaction of the fuel. Shock tube experiments and parallel numerical studies are conducted for shock waves incident on banks of instrumented cylinders meant to simulate the first wall of cooling tubes. Images of diffracted shocks, cylinder surface pressure traces, and calculated force distributions describe the interaction between the shock and the bank of cylinders. The numerical model shows good agreement with the experimental data.