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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.
Wenjun Yang, Changlin Lan, Guoqiang Li, Xueyu Gong, Xiang Gao
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 80 | Number 6 | August 2024 | Pages 724-730
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2234224
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
As a significant input for neutronics analysis of tokamak devices, the plasma neutron source is a bridge connecting fusion plasma physics and engineering design. A plasma neutron source model is established based on the EAST plasma configuration. The maximum neutron wall loading (NWL) is near the outboard midplane and is more than ~20% that of the inboard midplane. The investigations demonstrate that special care should be taken for radiation shielding and protection of the key components located on the outboard midplane and on the inboard midplane. The effect of the tritium accumulation on neutronics analysis should be carefully considered for EAST tokamak D-D plasma operations.
The effect of density peaking (DP) on the neutronics analysis is also investigated. It is evident that the peak NWLs are all near the outboard midplane and that the poloidal distributions of the NWL are slightly different for these cases. With increasing DP, both the outboard and inboard peak NWLs decrease. However, the decrease in NWL is very small; NWL decreases only 11% when the neutron source peak increases about 1.5 times.
