Development of an Extreme Environment Materials Research Facility at Princeton
The need for a fundamental understanding of material response to a neutron and/or high heat flux environment can yield development of improved materials and operations with existing materials. Such understanding has numerous applications in fields such as nuclear power (for the current fleet and future fission and fusion reactors), aerospace, and other research fields (e.g., high-intensity proton accelerator facilities for high energy physics research). A proposal has been advanced to develop a facility for testing various materials under extreme heat and neutron exposure conditions at Princeton. The Extreme Environment Materials Research Facility comprises an environmentally controlled chamber (48 m^3) capable of high vacuum conditions, with extreme flux beams and probe beams accessing a central, large volume target. The facility will have the capability to expose large surface areas (1 m^2) to 14 MeV neutrons at a fluence in excess of 10^13 n/s. Depending on the operating mode. Additionally beam line power on the order of 15-75 MW/m2 for durations of 1-15 seconds are planned... The multi-second duration of exposure can be repeated every 2-10 minutes for periods of 10-12 hours. The facility will be housed in the test cell that held the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR), which has the desired radiation and safety controls as well as the necessary loading and assembly infrastructure. The facility will allow testing of various materials to their physical limit of thermal endurance and allow for exploring the interplay between radiation-induced embrittlement, swelling and deformation of materials, and the fatigue and fracturing that occur in response to thermal shocks. The combination of high neutron energies and intense fluences will enable accelerated time scale studies. The results will make contributions for refining predictive failure modes (modeling) in extreme environments, as well as providing a technical platform for the development of new alloys, new materials, and the investigation of repair mechanisms. Effects on materials will be analyzed with in situ beam probes and instrumentation as the target is exposed to radiation, thermal fluxes and other stresses. Photon and monochromatic neutron fluxes, produced using a variable-energy (4-45 MeV) electron linac and the highly asymmetric electron-positron collisions technique used in high-energy physics research, can provide non-destructive, deep-penetrating structural analysis of materials while they are undergoing testing. The same beam lines will also be able to generate neutrons from photonuclear interactions using existing Bremsstrahlung and positrons on target quasi-monochromatic gamma rays. Other diagnostics will include infrared cameras, residual gas analyzer (RGA), and thermocouples; additional diagnostic capability will be added.
- Research Organization:
- Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-ACO2-09CH11466
- OSTI ID:
- 1001661
- Report Number(s):
- PPPL-4572; TRN: US1100431
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: TOFE Conference, Las Vegas, NV (Nov. 8-11, 2010)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Matter in Extreme Conditions Instrument - Conceptual Design Report
Plasma Surface Interactions: Bridging from the Surface to the Micron Frontier through Leadership Class Computing (Final Technical Progress Report)