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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.
Yu Gu, Mengqi Fan, Tengfei Cao, Yuanzhe Zhao, Xiaodan Zhang
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 78 | Number 4 | May 2022 | Pages 318-329
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2021.2009733
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In order to meet the needs of pulse experiments in different environments, a remote control and visualization system (RCVS) is designed and implemented based on the conceptual design of COntrol, Data Access and Communication (CODAC). RCVS works on the web server and adopts the website deployment mode of LAMP (Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP/Python) and the working mode of B/S architecture. It includes a remote data acquisition module, a remote real-time visualization module, a monitoring module, and a remote data access module. In the first one, to avoid system deadlock and other problems caused by concurrent operations between local and remote users and concurrent scheduling conflicts between remote users, we have improved the previous solution and adopted the Deterministic Finite Automaton (DFA) and the Two-Phase Locking (2PL) protocol to unify the state of RCVS and that of the overall system and to ensure the serializability of concurrent operations. With regard to real-time data visualization, RCVS adopts the technology of server push to obtain the needed data to minimize the pressure on the server and shun some problems such as server paralysis caused by network congestion in the case of large-scale concurrent request. In addition, RCVS provides a monitoring method based on a heartbeat mechanism and an Application Programming Interface (API) of the web end of the MDSplus database for system status monitoring and remote data retrieval and analysis. Moreover, thanks to the responsive design and the deployment model of B/S architecture, the system can be accessed on any terminal device. This system as part of the overall experimental system will be integrated into the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) neutral beam injection master control system in the future and provide services of remote control and visualization for its long-pulse experiments.
