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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.
H. H. Lee, J. K Lee, W. H. Ko
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 7 | October 2020 | Pages 787-794
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2020.1790712
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Charge exchange spectroscopy has been widely used in fusion devices to measure ion temperature, and toroidal and poloidal flow velocities of plasma. For local measurement, especially in the core region of the plasma, the spectrum emitted by the charge exchange reaction between the main plasma ions or impurity ions and the intentionally injected neutral beam should be analyzed so that parameters can be accurately deduced. Since the line-integrated spectrum signal through the line of sight of the diagnostic optics usually contains an unnecessary overlapped spectrum signal, referred to as the background signal, that typically originates from the plasma boundary region, a beam modulation technique is commonly applied to separate the background signal from the measured spectrum. Recently, it has been demonstrated in the KSTAR tokamak that a two-Gaussian fitting (TGF) method can be applied to analyze the spectrum and deduce plasma ion temperature and toroidal rotation velocity profiles of reasonable accuracy without beam modulation. It has been realized that the measurement result by the TGF method can be alternatively used to investigate plasma transport dynamics when beam modulation is prohibited to avoid any possible disturbance inhibiting robust plasma control and stable operation of the neutral beam injection system.