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Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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Latest News
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.
Y. Nakao, N. Senmyo, N. Nakamura, H. Matsuura, T. Johzaki, V. T. Voronchev
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 1 | July 2009 | Pages 391-394
IFE Target Design | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 1) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A8932
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new method to diagnose the degree of electron degeneracy in compressed fuel for fast-ignition inertial confinement fusion is proposed. We focus on 4.44-MeV -rays emitted in the reaction 9Be(,n)12C governed by fusion-produced energetic alpha-particles in a laser-imploded DT fuel pellet admixed with a small amount of 9B. In this case the compressed fuel pellet is not subjected to any heating laser pulse. We have evaluated the probability P-Be that the + 9Be reaction occurs during the slowing down of -particle. It is found that the reaction probability depends strongly on the degeneracy parameter , which is defined as the ratio of electron temperature to the Fermi energy. We show the possibility of diagnosing the electron degeneracy from the P-Be - diagram by detecting the 4.44-MeV -quanta and DT neutrons emitted from the dense core plasma.
