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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.
Shanqi Chen, Daochuan Ge, Zhen Wang, Jiangtao Jia, Zhibin Chen, Liqin Hu
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 74 | Number 3 | October 2018 | Pages 238-245
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2018.1461966
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
No-public evacuation is an expectation for fusion power plants (FPPs) from the public and governments. In this technical note, a preliminary consequence assessment of an ITER wet bypass–like accident (the accident with the most severe consequence in ITER) of a helium-cooled deuterium-tritium tokamak FPP is performed and compared with that of ITER. Ideal gas–based methodology is proposed to evaluate the released materials in accidents, which is verified by typical accident cases in FPPs. The verification indicates that, compared with the best estimated codes, the proposed method is much simpler and easier with effectiveness. The accident assessment shows that this helium-cooled FPP design may still need public evacuation if the accident happens, which demonstrates the requirement of further investigations for FPP accidents. Some suggestions are proposed to improve the safety of FPPs based on the assessment.