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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.
George A. Kyrala, Matthew M. Balkey, Cris W. Barnes, Steven H. Batha, Cindy R. Christensen, James A. Cobble, James Fincke, Paul Keiter, Nicholas Lanier, Dennis Paisley, Michael Sorem, Damian Swift, Jonathan Workman
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 45 | Number 2 | March 2004 | Pages 286-295
Technical Paper | Target Fabrication | doi.org/10.13182/FST04-A463
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Targets are used for a variety of purposes, but ultimately we use them to validate codes that help us predict and understand new phenomena or effects. The sophistication and complexity of High Energy Density Physics (HEDP) and Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) targets has increased in to match the advances made in modeling complex phenomena. The targets have changed from simple hohlraums, spherical geometries, and planar foils, to 3-dimensional geometries that require precision in construction, alignment, and metrology. Furthermore, material properties, such as surface morphologies and volume texture, have significant impact on the behavior of the targets and must be measured and controlled. In the following we will discuss how experimental physicists view targets and the influence that target construction has on interpreting the experimental results. We review a representative sampling of targets fabricated at the Los Alamos National Laboratory that are used in different experiments in support of ICF and HEDP.