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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.
Zoran Dragojlovic, Charles Kessel, Rene Raffray, Farrokh Najmabadi, Lester Waganer, Laila El-Guebaly, Leslie Bromberg
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 2 | August 2009 | Pages 913-917
Power Plants, Demo, and Next Steps | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A9026
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new computational model for fusion power plant system studies is being developed for the ARIES program. An operational design space has been created to explore the most influential parameters in the physical, technological and economic trade space related to the developmental transition from experimental facilities to viable commercial power plants. This allows examination of a multi-dimensional trade space as opposed to traditional sensitivity analyses about a baseline design point. The influence of multifunctional, highly dependent parameters can easily be visualized, which may highlight one or a few difficult-to-achieve parameters that would yield a highly acceptable design solution. The new ARIES systems code consists of adaptable physics, engineering and costing modules which capture the current tokamak knowledge database and reflect both near-term as well as advanced technology solutions that are higher risk but have higher performance potential. To fully assess the impact of the range of physics and engineering implementations, the plant cost accounts have been revised to reflect a more functional cost structure. All of these features have been validated against the highly respected ARIES-AT baseline. The present results demonstrate novel visualization techniques for trade space assessment of attractive tokamaks for commercial use.