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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.
José Guasp, Macarena Liniers, Cándida Fuentes, Germán Barrera
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 35 | Number 1 | January 1999 | Pages 32-41
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST99-A75
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The neutral beam power transmitted into the helical axis stellarator TJ-II is calculated for the final duct design of TJ-II. The transmitted beam is intercepted by the first toroidal field coil before reaching the plasma. The nontrapped fraction of the beam hits various vacuum vessel components.The adopted design of the graphite thermal shields used as vacuum vessel protection at TJ-II is presented. The design achieves a compromise between maximum power into the torus and minimum loads on sensitive parts.A three-dimensional version of the beam geometric code DENSB is set up to calculate the power loads due to shine-through neutrals on the shields under these circumstances. Power load maps are the input to the finite element code ANSYS for the calculation of temperature distributions.For the usual duty cycle at TJ-II (300-ms pulses every 300 s), the peak surface saturation temperatures at all surfaces remain under 650 °C, well below the tolerable limits for graphite.
