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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.
B. Saoutic, M. Chatelier, C. De Michelis
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 3 | October 2009 | Pages 1079-1091
Technical Papers | Tore Supra Special Issue | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A9169
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The superconducting tokamak Tore Supra was built in the 1980s, when the Joint European Torus (JET) started operation, with the aim of addressing technological and scientific questions relevant to long-pulse operation, in complement to JET objectives. The past 20 years of operation have confirmed that it was essential to integrate within a single device the features of high-performance long pulses in order to progress on the technological side with the level of effort needed for integration and interface management.Besides the 20 years of successful operation of the superconducting magnet, successive developments of the actively cooled plasma-facing components have allowed us to increase progressively the level of performance of Tore Supra. Since 2001, Tore Supra has been operated with an actively cooled toroidal pump limiter, complemented by actively cooled antenna protections and wall protection [Composants Internes et Limiteur (CIEL) project], capable of removing up to 20 to 25 MW of power. The high-performance long-pulse capability of Tore Supra culminated in 2003 with record discharge durations of 6 min driven by lower hybrid current drive (LHCD).Although Tore Supra has a circular cross section, which departs from the favorite divertor edge configuration, it has been possible to address original physics questions that are of importance for current and future scientific choices of ITER and beyond, e.g., plasma discharges driven by LHCD or ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH) (no neutral beams), carbon wall environment at constant temperature, ergodic edge, pellet/supersonic gas injection, electron cyclotron resonance heating-assisted mode control or plasma breakdown, etc.The large heat exhaust margin available with the CIEL components has made possible the current installation of a new LHCD power system with 16 upgraded 700-kW klystrons and an actively cooled passive/active lower hybrid antenna, which opens the prospects for larger-density operation and larger ICRH coupling and therefore higher-performance plasmas (higher bootstrap fraction) over discharges of the same or longer duration.This paper briefly sketches the research reported in this special issue of Fusion Science and Technology dedicated to the Tore Supra tokamak. It briefly sketches its history, describes its mission, and outlines its physics and technology results.
