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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.
Stephan M. Senn, Steven J. Pemberton, Per F. Peterson
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 45 | Number 4 | June 2004 | Pages 573-582
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST04-A532
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Oscillating thick-liquid jets have been proposed to create pockets to provide neutron shielding and droplet clearing at high repetition rate for heavy-ion inertial fusion energy. A procedure is introduced to compute nonsinusoidal nozzle oscillation functions based on the desired pocket geometry at the time of target ignition. The primary goals for creating optimum pocket geometries are discussed, such as complete pocket closing at time of target ignition, avoidance of liquid-liquid collisions that could lead to jetting into the target region, maintenance of a uniform void distribution to avoid the propagation of strong shocks toward the injection nozzles, and consideration of mechanical limitations on the maximum nozzle acceleration. The equation of motion for a horizontally translating nozzle is derived that generates the desired pocket shape. Numerical results are compared to a sinusoidal oscillation function. The same procedure had been applied to a rotating nozzle.