Wall conditioning in JT-60

Abstract

The vacuum vessel of JT-60 has a volume of 160 m 3 and a vacuum side surface of 2750 m 2 containing the surfaces of the first wall and many types of ports. The first wall is made of 20 μm TiC coated molybdenum and Inconel 625, bolted to the inner surface of the vacuum vessel. The vacuum vessel is evacuated with four identical pumping systems with a total pumping speed of 29 m 3/s for hydrogen. The wall conditioning procedure consisted of two wipes with special cloths wetted by freon after hot water and freon jet cleaning, and three bakeouts were carried out before the first plasma production. An ultimate pressure of 7.4 × 10 −7 Pa and an outgassing rate of 6.8 × 10 −10 Pa m 3/s m 2 were obtained. Low current pulse discharge cleaning (TDC) was carried out for two weeks at a vacuum vessel temperature of 200°C. The TDC is performed typically with a plasma current of 30 kA, a pulse duration of 40 ms, a repetition period in the range from 0.3 s to 1.2 s, a hydrogen pressure of 5.0 × 10 −3 Pa, and a toroidal field of 0.45 T. The TDC conditioning for 50 h removed a quantity of water vapor corresponding to approximately 0.3 g. The main residual gases consisting of hydrocarbons, were monitored in addition to hydrogen and carbon monoxide.