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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.
Thomas R. Barrett, M. Bamford, N. Bowden, B. Chuilon, T. Deighan, P. Efthymiou, M. Gorley, T. Grant, D. Horsley, M. Kovari, M. Tindall
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 79 | Number 8 | November 2023 | Pages 1039-1050
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2022.2147766
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Combined Heating and Magnetic Research Apparatus (CHIMERA) fusion technology test facility is under construction. The facility will be uniquely capable of semi-integral testing of fusion materials and component modules up to the size of the ITER test blanket module box, under combined conditions of in-vacuum high heat flux, static and pulsed magnetic fields, and high-temperature/high-pressure water cooling. This paper reports the high-level capabilities of the CHIMERA baselined design and the planned program of testing and describes the proposed strategy for use of simulations for virtual testing, qualification, and in-situ monitoring.
The first step in testing of a component mock-up is to take data from as-built geometry and other measurements and transmit them to an integrated computational model that can closely mimic the physical asset and form a digital replica. Not only can this digital replica be queried in advance of physical testing in the facility, allowing optimization of the test program, but combined with subsequent test data, it also can deliver much greater insight into experimental results than can be obtained using test data alone. The digital replica is used as the basis for a digital twin, which is live coupled to the running experiment, and is under development as a proposed key facet of fusion reactor surveillance in-service. Physical mock-ups for testing can be subjected to in-vacuum heat flux up to 0.5 MW/m2 over the entire surface while within a strong horizontal magnetic field. The central field can be up to 4 T with a peak in the test region of 5 T. The same component mock-ups can also be subjected to repeated magnetic field pulses with ramp rate 12 T/s, which can simulate loading conditions of a plasma disruption. Facility upgrades are underway to include a liquid metal circulation loop to allow the study of magnetohydrodynamics effects and to add a high-heat-flux system using a very high-power continuous-wave laser to achieve divertor-relevant heat fluxes of 20 MW/m2 over the area of a small-scale mock-up. Four examples are given to illustrate the physical testing program that is currently foreseen.
