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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.
Donald A. Spong, Dennis J. Strickler, Steven P. Hirshman, James F. Lyon, Lee A. Berry, David R. Mikkelsen, Donald A. Monticello, Andrew S. Ware
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 46 | Number 1 | July 2004 | Pages 215-223
Technical Paper | Stellarators | doi.org/10.13182/FST04-A558
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An important goal for a stellarator design is to incorporate enough flexibility to experimentally test a range of physics issues. The proposed Quasi-Poloidal Stellarator device achieves this by allowing independently variable currents in the modular, vertical field, and toroidal coil sets. Numerical optimizations and modeling show that this can allow significant tests of neoclassical cross-field transport rates, reduced poloidal flow damping (relative to the tokamak), and magnetic island width control. This flexibility is achieved in a unique, very low aspect ratio (R0/<a> = 2.7) two-field period (racetrack-shaped) configuration that generates rotational transform from a combination of internal plasma currents and external shaping.