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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.
A. G. Kellman for the DIII-D Team
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 3 | April 2005 | Pages 345-354
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Experimental Devices and Advanced Designs | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A715
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The advancement of plasma control techniques has enabled significant progress to be made toward the scientific understanding and realization of Advanced Tokamak operation on DIII-D. The Advanced Tokamak features fully noninductive current drive, operation at high plasma pressure and high energy confinement time. These features require efficient current drive systems, simultaneous control of plasma current and pressure profiles, and active feedback control of plasma instabilities. A number of key systems on DIII-D have been developed to provide this control capability. A versatile electron cyclotron heating and current drive system is routinely providing in excess of 2 MW of power for pulse lengths from 2 to 5 s. This system has been used to provide offaxis current drive, direct electron heating and pressure profile modification, and stabilization of the Neoclassical Tearing Mode instability. A combination of control of magnetic error fields, neutral beam induced plasma rotation, and active feedback stabilization using both external and internal nonaxisymmetric coil systems has been used to stabilize the Resistive Wall Mode at high values of plasma pressure. Control of the ELM instability has recently been demonstrated using the newly installed internal coil system. The higher speed and expanded realtime diagnostic capability of our recently upgraded plasma control system permits these various control techniques to be simultaneously integrated to achieve our high performance discharges. This has resulted in fully noninductively driven plasmas with N = 3.5 and T = 3.6% sustained for up to 1 s. Upgrades and facility modifications to further enhance our control and scientific capabilities including rotation of a neutral beamline, expanded EC system power, and installation of a new lower divertor are discussed.