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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.
Kun Lu, Shijun Qin, Qingfeng Wang, Peng Liu, Xin Mao, Yang Zhang, Zhuang Xu, Zhihong Liu, Chen Liu, Jing Wei, Guang Shen, Sumei Liu, Yuntao Song, Jiefeng Wu
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 1 | January 2020 | Pages 29-36
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1610319
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR) is a new superconducting magnet tokamak. The vacuum vessel (VV) is one of the core components of the CFETR device, and it will provide a high-vacuum environment for the plasma, improve radiation shielding and plasma stability, and provide support for in-vessel components. The 1/8 VV sector mock-up has been designed and manufactured in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Plasma Physics (ASIPP) from a few years ago to verify the design and key technologies to be used in the future. The production and assembly of the 1/8 VV sector are not in the same place, so lifting lugs and a support platform were designed for lifting and supporting the 1/8 VV sector mock-up. The detailed design of the 1/8 VV sector mock-up lifting lugs and support platform are described. There are two design options for the lifting lugs—removable and nonremovable—and there are also two design options—the integral and the separated—for the supporting platform. At the same time finite element analysis and assessment of the lifting lugs and supporting platform were done. The maximum stress does not exceed the allowable stress of the material, in consequence both of the two design options are practicable, respectively. All the design and analysis results will provide technical support for the assembly of the 1/8 VV sector in the future.