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Safety and Tritium Applied Researth (STAR) Facility

The STAR facility, shown above, was created for use by the fusion community to study tritium science and technological issues associated with fusion science. In April 2000 the INL Fusion Safety Program was selected by the Department of Energy Office of Fusion Energy Sciences as the host for the Safety and Tritium Applied Research (STAR) facility.

Most Department of Energy laboratories have one or more specialized facilities classified as “National User Facilities.” This designation means arrangements have been made for other institutions to come into the facility and conduct experiments. The National User Facility classification allows non-DOE programs to use the facility on a pay-per-use basis.

July 2000 Press Release

Fusion Energy is an attractive long-term energy source because of the virtually inexhaustible supply of fuel and the promises of minimal adverse environmental impact and inherent safety. The realization of these advantages for fusion devices can be achieved by emphasizing safety engineering early in the devices' development cycle.

To support safety engineering in fusion development, the Fusion Safety Program (FSP) at the INL was established by the Department of Energy (DOE) in 1979.

The program's focus is to identify potential safety concerns in fusion devices and develop analytic and risk assessment methodologies to improve the safety analyses of these devices. Our research activities include experimental campaigns for generating safety analysis data, computer code development, and participation in international fusion safety events. We actively pursue distributing our research results to the scientific community. Since 1998, we have published approximately 50 journal articles, conference proceedings, and technical reports.

Our research tasks center on understanding:

• behavior of the largest sources of radioactive and hazardous materials in a deuterium-tritium machine (e.g., activation products, dust, tritium, beryllium, and lithium),
• how energy sources (e.g., magnets, plasma, decay heat, and chemical reactions) in a fusion facility can mobilize radioactive and hazardous materials,
• safety and environmental issues associated with emerging fusion design concepts.

Our research capabilities are comprised of both analytic and experimental components. These components are used to define our eight research areas:

• Fusion regulatory support is provided to the DOE and the international fusion community and includes regulatory issues relative to fusion conceptual designs. -more-
  Contact: David A. Petti, 208-526-7735, Send E-mail
• Fusion risk assessment includes probabilistic risk assessment of conceptual fusion designs and analyses of fault trees, cost benefit, reliability, availability, and maintainability. -more-
  Contact: Lee Cadwallader, 208-526-1232, Send E-mail
• Fusion safety code development and application consists of developing the computer codes required for analyzing the thermal-hydraulic response of (1) cryogenic systems, (2) super-conducting magnets, and (3) reactor vessel cooling systems during postulated accident scenarios, as well as the quantity of activated material mobilized during these accidents. Our work includes safety code application to accident analyses of current fusion designs, international benchmarking of safety codes, and code validation with experimental data. -more-
  Contact: Brad Merrill, 208-533-0395, Send E-mail
• Activation product mobilization and transport study the influence of oxidation on the mobilization of neutron-activated fusion materials and the subsequent transport behavior of the mobilized material (aerosol) from the test specimen. An important component of this work is our characterization of the aerosol's particle size and chemistry. -more-
  Contact: Galen Smolik, (208) 526-8317, Send E-mail
• Chemical reactivity of fusion materials involves chemical reactivity experiments with fusion materials to quantify the materials' reactivity with air or steam. Contact: Bob Anderl, (208) 533-4153, Send E-mail
• Safety of fusion liquids involves experiments with the liquid coolants proposed for fusion devices in order to study the coolants' chemical reactivity and the mobilization potential of released radioactive and toxic material. -more-
  Contact: Phil Sharpe, (208) 526-9830, Send E-mail
• Tritium behavior in fusion materials studies how tritium from the fusion plasma interacts with plasma-facing materials and how this tritium can be retained and/or mobilized during postulated accident scenarios. -more-
  Contact: Phil Sharpe, (208) 526-9830, Send E-mail
• Tokamak dust characterization studies the physical characteristics (size and effective surface area) of the particulate, “tokamak dust” that is produced in existing fusion devices. -more-
  Contact: Phil Sharpe, (208) 526-9830, Send E-mail

We are currently involved with the major U.S. fusion programs of Advanced Limiter/divertor Plasma-facing Components (ALPS), Advanced Power Extraction (APEX), Fusion Ignition Research Experiment (FIRE), and the Advanced Reactor Innovations and Evaluation Study (ARIES). We have recently begun safety analysis work for the inertial fusion commercial power plant studies of SOMBRERO and HYLIFE II. Our research involves collaborations with Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, University of Wisconsin, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.