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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.
Shintaro Ishiyama, Teruya Tanaka, Akio Sagara, Hirotaka Chikaraishi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 75 | Number 8 | November 2019 | Pages 862-872
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1658046
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We are proposing to connect a supercritical CO2 gas turbine (SCOT) power generator to the Operational Recovery of Separated Hydrogen and Heat Inquiry-2 (Oroshhi-2) nuclear fusion primary molten salt test loop constructed at the National Institute for Fusion Science and conduct a demonstration test of the power generation principle from the world’s first nuclear fusion simulated heat output. In this paper, we describe the results of a design study of the FLiNaK/CO2 intermediate heat exchanger and SCOT power generation system and related equipment that can be connected to the molten salt test loop. From the results of this study, it was concluded that the power generation principle verification test with 20-kW(electric)–class power generation with an efficiency of 20% is possible by the SCOT system connected to the FLiNaK test loop in Oroshhi-2 equipment via the intermediate heat exchanger.
