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Status of the ITER Electron Cyclotron Heating and Current Drive System

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Abstract

The electron cyclotron (EC) heating and current drive (H&CD) system developed for the ITER is made of 12 sets of high-voltage power supplies feeding 24 gyrotrons connected through 24 transmission lines (TL), to five launchers, four located in upper ports and one at the equatorial level. Nearly all procurements are in-kind, following general ITER philosophy, and will come from Europe, India, Japan, Russia and the USA. The full system is designed to couple to the plasma 20 MW among the 24 MW generated power, at the frequency of 170 GHz, for various physics applications such as plasma start-up, central H&CD and magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) activity control. The design takes present day technology and extends toward high-power continuous operation, which represents a large step forward as compared to the present state of the art. The ITER EC system will be a stepping stone to future EC systems for DEMO and beyond.

The development of the EC system is facing significant challenges, which includes not only an advanced microwave system but also compliance with stringent requirements associated with nuclear safety as ITER became the first fusion device licensed as basic nuclear installations as of 9 November 2012.

Since the conceptual design of the EC system was established in 2007, the EC system has progressed to a preliminary design stage in 2012 and is now moving forward toward a final design.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the numerous scientists and engineers involved in the EC system design development and procurement. This includes those from the five participating domestic agencies (Europe, India, Japan, Russia and the USA) and the associated laboratories in each of these ITER partners. In addition, the authors would like to thank the scientists working and exploiting the EC systems on ASDEX upgrade, DIII-D, FTU, JT-60U, KSTAR, LHD, SST-1, TCV, Tore Supra and W7X, in addition to the JET, ORNL and PPPL scientists.

The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the ITER Organization.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ITER Organization, Route de Vinon sur Verdon, CS 90 046, 13067, St Paul Lez Durance, Cedex, France

    Caroline Darbos, Franco Gandini, Thibault Gassmann, Mark A. Henderson, Toshimichi Omori & Dharmesh Purohit

  2. Fusion for Energy, Josep Pla 2, Barcelona, 08019, Spain

    Ferran Albajar, Tullio Bonicelli, Giuseppe Carannante, Mario Cavinato, Fabio Cismondi, Mario Gagliardi, Risto Nousiainen, Gabriella Saibene & Filippo Sartori

  3. Institute of Applied Physics Russian Academy of Sciences, 46 Ulyanov Street, Nizhny, Novgorod, 603950, Russia

    Grigory Denisov, Alexander Oustinov & Vladimir L. Popov

  4. Istituto di Fisica del Plasma, Association EURATOM-ENEA-CNR, Milan, Italy

    Daniela Farina

  5. CRPP, Association EURATOM-Confédération Suisse, EPFL Ecublens, CH-1015, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Timothy Goodman

  6. US ITER Project Office, ORNL, 055 Commerce Park, PO Box 2008, Oak Ridge, TN, 37831, USA

    Gregory Hanson, Karen McElhaney & David Rasmussen

  7. Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), 801-1 Mukoyama, Naka-shi, Ibaraki, 311-0193, Japan

    Ken Kajiwara, Yasuhisa Oda, Keishi Sakamoto & Koji Takahashi

  8. Institute for Plasma Research, Near Indira Bridge, Bhat, Gandhinagar, 382428, India

    Darshankumar Parmar, Shambhu Laxmikanth Rao, Vipal Rathod & Narinder Pal Singh

  9. FOM Institute DIFFER, P.O. Box 1207, 3430 BE, Nieuwegein, The Netherlands

    Dennis M. S. Ronden

  10. KIT, Association EURATOM-KIT, IMF, Postfach 3640, D-76021, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Theo Scherer & Dirk Strauß

Authors
  1. Caroline Darbos
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  2. Ferran Albajar
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  3. Tullio Bonicelli
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  10. Franco Gandini
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  13. Gregory Hanson
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  14. Mark A. Henderson
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  15. Ken Kajiwara
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  16. Karen McElhaney
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  19. Toshimichi Omori
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  20. Alexander Oustinov
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  21. Darshankumar Parmar
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  22. Vladimir L. Popov
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  23. Dharmesh Purohit
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  24. Shambhu Laxmikanth Rao
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  25. David Rasmussen
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  26. Vipal Rathod
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  27. Dennis M. S. Ronden
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  28. Gabriella Saibene
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  29. Keishi Sakamoto
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  31. Theo Scherer
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  32. Narinder Pal Singh
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  33. Dirk Strauß
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  34. Koji Takahashi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Caroline Darbos.

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Darbos, C., Albajar, F., Bonicelli, T. et al. Status of the ITER Electron Cyclotron Heating and Current Drive System. J Infrared Milli Terahz Waves 37, 4–20 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10762-015-0211-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10762-015-0211-3

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