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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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.
C. E. Kessel, T. Bohm, M. S. Tillack, P. Titus, Y. Zhai
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 77 | Number 7 | November 2021 | Pages 519-531
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2021.1909988
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Restraining the size of fusion power plants is considered an important avenue to make them a competitive energy source among other forms of energy production. The most critical contributor to the size of a tokamak is the inboard radial build, composed of multiple components with various functions. This build is the ultimate limit to size reduction. The Fusion Nuclear Science Facility is reviewed and each element of the inboard build is described, showing that the build, including breeding blanket, structural ring, vacuum vessel, low-temperature shield, and toroidal field and central solenoid (CS) coils, contributes 2.9 m of build, with 0.6 m of bore hole inside the CS coil, or 3.5 m to reach the plasma scrape-off layer. This implies that it would be challenging to make a significantly smaller build and simultaneously meet all the engineering requirements.