The Fusion Safety Program at the Department of Energy's Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) has received a significant boost. DOE's Office of Fusion Energy Science has selected the INEEL as the site of the Safety and Tritium Applications Research (STAR) Facility. INEEL officials stated, "The selection will expand the INEEL's scope of fusion research and development, elevate the INEEL standing in the fusion community, help attract top scientists to do research at the INEEL and promote the INEEL mission of using science to support operations at the Laboratory."

Dave Petti, Ph.D., INEEL engineering fellow and leader of the Fusion Safety Program, says, "Our getting the project rested on a good technical reputation in fusion safety. We are known as team players and understand our role as a team player. We are good collaborators. Also, the caliber of our work and our people was important. DOE looked at our responsiveness and our ability to meet milestones. These were all influencing factors."

He says that support from John Gill, an expert in tritium work at DOE's Mound Facility that is operated by BWXT, made a big difference in preparing the winning proposal. "He contributed to the stature of our proposal and helped with understanding the needs of handling tritium and the applicable DOE orders," said Petti. "He provided us with real- world cost estimates and technical detail."

Kathryn McCarthy, Ph.D., INEEL Nuclear Engineering Design and Research manager, says the new program will help diversify the INEEL's fusion program from strictly safety oriented into research into tritium/chemistry areas. "It's a feather in our cap. Our technical proposal was very high quality. It says a lot for our technical capabilities and our scientists."

Petti says the key elements of the STAR Facility are the Tritium Plasma Experiment and experiments to study chemistry and tritium behavior in molten salts. The Tritium Plasma Experiment is now housed at Los Alamos National Laboratory. It's a large plasma column research device used to study the interaction of tritium with materials. Petti says the INEEL's Fusion Safety Program has worked with small amounts of tritium in the past, but the Tritium Plasma Experiment will increase the volume of tritium experimented with and help make the INEEL a world center for this kind of research. "Our experience in handling tritium and the design of the expansion to the INEEL's Tritium Research Laboratory will ensure the safety of operations," he added.

McCarthy explained, "Tritium is a fusion fuel. When you produce tritium, you need to know how much of it permeates the solid materials and how much tritium is retained in the material. The TPE will help us understand this process."

The molten salt work will be done in conjunction with Japanese fusion scientists. It will involve investigating using molten salts to breed tritium. A primary salt to be studied is lithium fluoride/beryllium fluoride, known as FliBe. McCarthy said the lithium in the FliBe, when bombarded with neutrons, breeds tritium. "But when you breed tritium, you create free fluorine which is very corrosive. So we must learn how to control this condition. Also, FliBe, when exposed to air or steam, may release other materials and we need to study those releases."

Glen Longhurst, Ph.D., a consulting engineer in the Fusion Safety Program, noted, too, that other research performed in the STAR Facility could benefit the INEEL's Advanced Test Reactor program. Inside the ATR core are beryllium reflectors that reflect neutrons back towards the experiments when the reactor is running. Over years, the neutron bombardment causes tritium to build up in the reflectors, and they must be replaced periodically. The tritium buildup makes the reflectors difficult to dispose of. The research in the fusion program may help scientists understand how the tritium can be recovered from the reflectors, making them eligible for shallow land disposal. "One of the charters of the INEEL contract," says Longhurst, "is to merge science with operations issues. We have scientists who can help solve an operational problem."

Located at the Test Reactor Area, the INEEL's existing Tritium Research Laboratory, under the direction of consulting scientist Bob Anderl, Ph.D., will be expanded to house the new research equipment and experiments. Experiments in the expanded area could begin by April 2001. The first experiments will be a joint U.S./Japanese collaboration involving FliBe research. A full range of fusion experiments could be running by 2005.

McCarthy said, "The STAR Facility will provide an opportunity for us to interact with a new group of scientists, broaden our contacts within the fusion community and give us the opportunity for new work. There will be offshoots with the TPE that will provide the opportunity for research with outside programs including the Inland Northwest Research Alliance. (INRA is a consortium of seven universities that is part of the INEEL contractor team.) We hope to have many experiments with different applications, not all of them in the fusion area."

McCarthy stated, "We want to make the STAR Facility an official User Facility, which makes it easier to bring in researchers and projects." Petti adds that letters of support for the project from DOE-Idaho Manager Bev Cook and INEEL Laboratory Director Bill Shipp made a big difference. Petti concludes, "This is exciting because it's new R&D. It's rewarding to work on a successful proposal that wasn't even envisioned a year ago. It's going to provide some new internal opportunities for employees and attract new researchers with new ideas, which helps a research program remain dynamic."

The INEEL's Fusion Safety Program has existed since 1978 and has been involved in both national and international fusion programs. The program's overall goals have been to demonstrate the safety and environmental potential of fusion.

The program's focus has been to understand the behavior of radioactive and hazardous materials in deuterium-tritium-powered fusion machines, to develop the analytical tools to describe and understand how a fusion machine would act in an off-normal event and to determine the safety and potential environmental risks of fusion as an energy source.

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