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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.
Aleksei Meshcheryakov, Irina Grishina
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 79 | Number 4 | May 2023 | Pages 476-487
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2174319
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
At the L-2M stellarator, in the electron cyclotron resonance heating regime, the processes of plasma self-organization were studied in different successive phases of plasma confinement during the facility shot. It is shown that in the phase of initial plasma heating, because of the absence of plasma-wall interaction, the canonical pressure profiles of the electronic component are not formed. In the quasi-stationary phase, the forming pressure profiles are close to the canonical one, and the energy loss is somewhat higher than in the phase beginning immediately after switching off the microwave heating pulse. After turning off the microwave pulse, the self-organization processes form the canonical pressure profiles of the electronic component in plasma, which ensure minimal energy loss from the plasma. In this case, the total power of energy losses from the plasma is proportional to the cube of the plasma energy.