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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.
P. A. Bagryansky et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 1 | January 2005 | Pages 59-62
Technical Paper | Open Magnetic Systems for Plasma Confinement | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A608
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
At present, the GDT facility is being upgraded. The first stage of the upgrade is the Synthesised Hot Ion Plasmoid (SHIP) experiment. It aims, on the one hand, at the investigation of plasmas which are expected to appear in the region of high neutron production in a GDT based fusion neutron source proposed by the Budker Institute and, on the other hand, at the investigation of plasmas the parameters of which have never been achieved before in axisymmetric magnetic mirrors.The experiment is performed in a small mirror section which is installed at the end of one side of GDT. The magnetic field on axis is in the range of 0.5-2.0 Tesla and the mirror ratio is 1.2-1.4. The mirror is filled with background plasma streaming in from the central cell. This plasma component is maxwellised and has an electron temperature of about 100 eV. Two neutral beam injectors perpendicularly inject a total current of about 50 Atom Amperes of deuterium neutrals with an energy of 20 keV as a pulse with a duration of about 1 ms. Ionisation of the beams generates the high-energy ion component. The device has been equipped with several diagnostic methods which are successfully used in GDT experiments.The paper presents first results of plasma parameter measurements in SHIP experiment.
