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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.
Yuanyang Chen, Xiaohua Bao, Ge Gao, Yizhui Tang, Yong Yang, Sheng Liu, Min Wang
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 77 | Number 6 | August 2021 | Pages 469-476
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2021.1930824
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To design the alternating current operation of the J-text tokamak, this paper studies the plasma equilibrium during the plasma toroidal current reversing. First, four alternative current reversal equilibrium configurations with circular cross section when the total toroidal current becomes zero were constructed. Then, the profile of the plasma current was used as the input of a fixed boundary equilibrium solver to calculate the poloidal field coil currents. According to the results, the relationship between the plasma current distribution and currents in ohmic heating coils and vertical field coils is discussed. Finally, the plasma equlibrium of a toroidal current reversal with total plasma current from 40 kA to –40 kA in 40 ms was designed.
