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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.
Paul R. Garabedian, Long-Poe Ku, the ARIES Team
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 3 | April 2005 | Pages 400-405
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Experimental Devices and Advanced Designs | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A721
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The discovery of quasiaxially symmetric stellarators whose magnetic spectrum has approximate two-dimensional symmetry opens up the possibility of designing fusion reactors that have tokamak transport and stellarator stability. Prototypes with two or three field periods have asymmetries almost as small as the coefficients for a typical tokamak that are associated with ripple from the toroidal coils or helical excursion of the magnetic axis resulting from instability. We have found modular coils that are only moderately twisted and produce robust flux surfaces that do not deteriorate when changes are made in the magnetic field. This work is bolstered by recent stellarator experiments that have exceeded stability limits predicted by linear theory. The problem may be that force balance and stability are lost across islands if the equilibrium equations are not in conservation form.