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Latest News
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.
João Pedro Fonseca Ferro
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 78 | Number 5 | July 2022 | Pages 347-351
Letter to the Editor | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2022.2039032
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The editorial staff has chosen to publish this letter to present new nonorthodox physical ideas, which necessitate pondering on possibilities about how to formulate new physics and conduct the supportive calculations. This letter is just a proposal for a different philosophical view on the possibility of reaching the fusion reaction, outlining the corresponding physical solutions. If the presented ideas find followers and support, further developments may be expected for the realization of the technical aspects of this fusion process. At least, we hope this letter to the editor provokes discussion in the fusion community.
—Leigh Winfrey, editor, and Arkady Serikov, associate editor
When two (or more) nuclei fuse to form a heavier element, a known quantity of energy is released. Today, the process seems easy to describe, at least to some degree.
The endeavor to construct the devices for fusion energy is great, and there are some experimental ones running the diverse experiments. The proposal now presented is a nanoapparatus. If one could do such a nanodevice, it could be integrated in a wide range of applications once it is possible to consider it portable and able to generate different controllable amounts of energy.
The author calls this document, in a broad sense, a conceptual thesis. Mostly, it has natural language as the principal tool. A guide for the calculations was worked to complete the essay, supporting a possible configuration of a nanodevice. This is a kind of a conjecture, a logical but speculative one, that needs to be verified. Like some studies, this one shows first and only its most theoretical content.
The author either explicitly or implicitly discusses the space-time fabric, double-slit experiment, and other concepts, like nonduality and indistinguishability. The technology is supported by some established theories or others that have been adapted.