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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.
M. Lipa, J. Schlosser, F. Escourbiac
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 3 | October 2009 | Pages 1124-1149
Technical Papers | Tore Supra Special Issue | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A9171
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To fulfill the Tore Supra mission (the realization and study of high-performance long-duration discharges), the development of reliable actively cooled plasma-facing components is mandatory. This was foreseen from the beginning of Tore Supra, and since 1985, the Tore Supra team has been involved in the development and fabrication of actively cooled plasma-facing components. The initial configuration of the machine in 1988 included a 12 m2 inner first wall made of stainless steel tubes armoured with brazed graphite, outer water-cooled stainless steel panels, and modular pump limiters. This configuration, using the inner wall as limiter, allowed 20- to 30-s-duration plasma discharges to be performed. Further progress required the development of a more reliable brazing technique and a limiter support system mechanically independent of the vacuum vessel. A new configuration (Composants Internes et Limiteur project), using a completely new concept of high-heat-flux components (including notably a braze-free bond between carbon-fiber composite tiles and copper heat sink), was therefore launched in 1997. With this new configuration, discharges up to 6 min with 1 GJ of injected and removed power were achieved in 2003.