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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.
Hiromasa Takeno, Yuusuke Kiriyama, Yasuyoshi Yasaka
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 3 | April 2005 | Pages 450-454
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Experimental Devices and Advanced Designs | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A728
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An experimental study of direct power conversion for D-3He fusion is presented. In a small-scale simulator of direct energy converter, which is based on a principle of deceleration of 14.7MeV protons by traveling wave field, a new structure of an external transmission circuit in experiment is proposed for the purpose of enhancement of deceleration electrode voltages. A prototype circuit was designed and constructed, resulting improvement of voltage amplitude in an order of magnitude. A more practical circuit, in which inductor elements were manufactured by using coaxial cables, was also constructed and tested. An excitation of the third harmonic frequency with a significant amplitude was observed. The cause of this problem is attributed to the modulated ion beam which has a third harmonic component and fact that the inductance of the element nonlinearly depends on frequency. This problem is serious for a practical scale energy converter, and a careful design of the circuit could avoid the problem.
