Radio frequency additional heating systems issues for the TORE-SUPRA WEST project

Abstract

This year TORE-SUPRA celebrated its 25 years of operation. During this long time a number of technologies have been developed [1]. First of all it was mandatory to develop reliable superconducting magnets at ~ - 4 K, with superfluid helium as efficient coolant. For the production of steady state discharge, 3 types of Radio Frequency (RF) additional heating systems have been developed: Lower Hybrid Current Drive (LHCD), Ion Cyclotron Resonance Heating (ICRH) and Electron Cyclotron Resonance Heating (ECRH) [2]. To cope with long lasting discharges (up to 380 s × 2.8 MW) and large RF additional heating power (12.3 MW × 3 s), Actively Cooled (AC) Plasma Facing Components (PFC) were deployed in TORE-SUPRA for the first time in a Tokamak environment. TORE-SUPRA is now being modified into an axisymmetric tokamak with actively cooled tungsten main chamber walls and a divertor, the WEST project (W - for tungsten - Environment in Steady-state Tokamak) [3]. This new facility has the objective to offer ITER a test bed for validating the relevant actively cooled metallic technologies in D-shape H-mode plasmas. In contrast to other metallic devices such as JET and ASDEX, WEST will rely only on RF additional power systems. A set of plasma scenarios have been identified, ranging from a high total RF power scenario up to 15 MW during 30 seconds, to a high fluence scenario of 1000 seconds with up to 10 MW of injected RF power. These scenarios are able to reproduce ITER relevant conditions of steady state heat loads of 10 to 20 MW/m <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> , to test tungsten actively cooled divertor technologies with relevant power heat fluxes and particle fluence. The paper presents the main issues regarding WEST project and especially the additional RF power injection systems (2 LHCD antennas, 3 + 4 = 7 MW continuous wave and 3 ICRH antennas, 3 × 3 = 9 MW-30 s or 3 MW-1000 s) for WEST. The front face of the LHCD antennas will be modified to account for the different plasma position and smaller toroidal field ripple, due to the more inward antenna position in the vessel. No other modifications are needed on the Passive-Active Multijunction (PAM) or the Fully-Active Multijunction (FAM) LHCD antennas, or the associated generator (2 × 8 klystrons, 600 kW each CW). Concerning the ICRH system, the main challenges are its ELM-resilience, its compatibility with continuous operation, and the interaction of the RF near fields with neighbouring plasma facing components. 3 new actively cooled antennas are being designed to be matched with an ELMs resilient electric circuit. The proposed solution is based on the JET-EP antenna and CEA prototype tested in 2007, both having identical internal conjugate-T electrical layout and a demonstrated load resilience capacity to plasma edge transients during ELMs.