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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.
N. B. Morley, S. Malang, I. Kirillov
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 3 | April 2005 | Pages 488-501
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - First Wall, Blanket, and Shield | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A733
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper provides a description of the most promising liquid breeder blankets currently proposed for testing in ITER. The critical MHD issues for selfcooled and dual coolant LM systems are the MHD pressure drop and flow distribution with ideal and imperfect insulator barriers/coatings, ideal and imperfect flow channel inserts, and complex geometry flow elements like expansions, contraction, manifolds, etc. Separately cooled LM systems still must circulate the LM for tritium removal, and similar MHD issues may limit flow velocity and influence tritium permeation due to creation of stagnant regions and other nonideal flow distribution effects. Molten salt breeder/coolants have significantly reduced electrical conductivity as compared to LMs, and MHD pressure drop is not considered a serious issue. However, MS also has much lower thermal conductivity, and the heat transfer to/from the structure depends on turbulent convection. The degradation of convective heat transfer by MHD turbulence modification/suppression is of great interest for both selfcooled MS systems where first wall cooling may need to be enhanced, and dual coolant MS systems where heat transfer from the hot breeder to the cooler wall needs to be suppressed. These issues are discussed in detail and development plans specifically for the dualcoolant PbLi concept, up to and including integrated testing in ITER, are presented.