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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.
C. R. Gibson, D. P. Atkinson, J. A. Baltz, V. P. Brugman, F. E. Coffield, O. D. Edwards, B. J. Haid, S. F. Locke, T. N. Malsbury, S. J. Shiromizu, K. M. Skulina
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 55 | Number 3 | April 2009 | Pages 233-236
Technical Paper | Eighteenth Target Fabrication Specialists' Meeting | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-3453
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The U.S. Department of Energy has embarked on a campaign to conduct credible fusion ignition experiments on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2010. The target assembly specified for this campaign requires the formation of a deuterium-tritium fuel ice layer in a 2-mm-diam capsule at the center of a 9-mm-long × 5-mm-diam cylinder, called a hohlraum. The ice layer must be formed and maintained at temperatures below 20 K. At laser shot time, the target is positioned at the center of the NIF target chamber, aligned to the laser beams, and held stable to <7-m root-mean-square. We have completed the final design of the cryogenic target system and are currently integrating the devices necessary to create, characterize, and position the cryogenic target for ignition experiments.