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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.
J. Seol, K. C. Shaing
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 78 | Number 2 | February 2022 | Pages 111-118
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2021.1960090
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Since the magnetic field strength is not constant on the magnetic flux surface, the flow also varies so that the density compression occurs along the poloidal direction. Since the inhomogeneous flow causes the density compression in the poloidal direction, the parallel flow is also perturbed. In this study, we investigate the effects of the parallel flow perturbation on the geodesic acoustic mode (GAM) when it is described by the kinetic approach. Using the continuity equation, it is shown that the flow perturbation in the geodesic curvature direction is balanced by the lowest-order term of the density perturbation in , and the flow perturbation in the parallel direction is balanced by the higher-order terms of the density perturbation. Since the density perturbation includes both the perpendicular and parallel flow perturbation contributions, the GAM frequency obtained by the kinetic approach has the parallel flow perturbation contribution, which is 1/ term in the GAM frequency equation. The low frequency branch of the dispersion relation is also discussed to demonstrate the connection between the GAM theory and neoclassical theory for the first time. It is shown that the flow perturbation in the geodesic curvature direction is balanced mostly by the parallel flow perturbation. It means that the flow in the flux surface is divergence free approximately as in the usual transport ordering. Thus, the poloidal flow goes to the neoclassical flow when the low frequency branch is taken.