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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.
Neil Mitchell, Denis Bessette, Hirobumi Fujieda, Yuri Gribov, Cees Jong, Fabrice Simon
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 2 | August 2009 | Pages 676-684
ITER | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A8987
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The ITER magnet system, particularly the Poloidal Field Coils (PFC) and Central Solenoid Coils (CSC), was originally designed to drive, confine and stabilise a set of plasmas about a baseline of a reference 15MA 400s inductive burn, with capability for inductive short burn at currents up to 17MA and 10MA non-inductive plasmas depending on the plasma parameters that can be achieved.Recent assessments of experimental data and improved plasma modelling have identified some constraints in the 2001 design that may limit the range of plasmas that can be generated in ITER. The constraints are a mixture of coil superconducting performance, structural and electrical limits, and concern both the accuracy of the formation of the plasma configuration (including the position of the separatrix lines in the divertor) and the stabilisation of the plasma position.
