MW Gyrotron Research Articles

Conceptual Design of 15 T/220 mm Magnet for 350 GHz, 1 MW Gyrotrons for Fusion Reactors

Conceptual Design of 15 T/220 mm Magnet for 350 GHz, 1 MW Gyrotrons for Fusion Reactors

First Demonstration of Frequency-Locked Operation of a 170 GHz/1 MW Gyrotron

First Demonstration of Frequency-Locked Operation of a 170 GHz/1 MW Gyrotron

MISTRAL campaign in support of W7-X long pulse operation

Following two initial campaigns [1], Stellarator Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) has now completed the construction phase by installation of active cooling of all plasma facing components. The machine is presently commissioned for the next campaign (OP2) aiming at 1 GJ per pulse, e.g. 100 s at 10 MW, eventually aiming at 18 GJ, e.g. 1800 s at 10 MW. The key heating system is the Electron Cyclotron Resonance Heating (ECRH) system, consisting of 10 gyrotrons with power per gyrotron ranging from 0.6 MW up to 1.0 MW at 140 GHz. A phased upgrade of the installation is in progress with the addition of 2 gyrotrons and the development of 1.5 MW and 2.0 MW gyrotrons, such that at the end of the upgrade 4 gyrotrons will be available in each power class of 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 MW [2]. The increased ECRH power, combined with O2 and X3 heating schemes at high densities, will lead to increased microwave stray radiation. This is non-absorbed microwave power that diffuses inside the vessel and is incident on all in-vessel components including vacuum windows and attached diagnostic systems. A fraction of the stray radiation is absorbed by resistive or dielectric losses of these components, leading to thermal loads that scale with stray radiation levels and pulse length. At W7-X a high power microwave stray radiation launch facility ’MISTRAL’ is available that is used to qualify invessel components for use at specified microwave surface power densities [Wm−2]. This paper reports on MISTRAL campaigns in 2020 2021 for testing of stray radiation loads during OP2 in W7-X, as well as on an EUROfusion program assessing stray radiation loads on ITER components. A dedicated, absolutely calibrated, caloric load was developed for the campaign to obtain measurement of stray radiation power levels as well as to conveniently expose samples. Amongst other we report on shielding concepts using metal enclosures combined with microwave absorbing coatings and dielectric heating of vacuum windows.

A new 3MW ECRH system at 105 GHz for WEST

The aim of the WEST experiments is to master long plasma pulses (1000s) and expose ITER-like tungsten wall to deposited heat fluxes up to 10 MW/m2. To increase the margin to reach the H-Mode and to control W-impurities in the plasma, the installation of an upgraded ECRH heating system, with a gyrotron performance of 1MW/1000s per unit, is planned in 2023. With the modifications of Tore Supra to WEST, simulations at a magnetic field B0∼3.7T and a central density ne0∼6 × 1019 m−3 show that the optimal frequency for central absorption is 105 GHz. For this purpose, a 105 GHz/1MW gyrotron (TH1511) has been designed at KIT in 2021, based on the technological design of the 140 GHz/1.5 MW (TH1507U) gyrotron for W7-X. Currently, three units are under fabrication at THALES. In the first phase of the project, some of the previous Tore Supra Electron Cyclotron (EC) system components will be re-installed and re-used whenever possible. This paper describes the studies performed to adapt the new ECRH system to 105 GHz and the status of the modifications necessary to re-start the system with a challenging schedule.

The Development of 170 GHz, 1 MW Gyrotron for Fusion Application

This paper presents the overall conceptual design of a 170 GHz, 1 MW gyrotron for plasma heating applications in thermonuclear fusion reactors. The operating mode is carefully selected with consideration of mode competition. The TE25,10 mode is determined as the operating mode in the present study. A weakly tapered conventional resonator is used for the study of the RF behavior, and multimode calculations are carried out for power and efficiencies. The optimized structure of the beam tunnel can further attenuate low-frequency oscillation. The design studies of a triode-type magnetic injection gun, quasi-optical mode converter, and single-disc sapphire window are also described. In addition, novel cold test methods which can effectively validate assembles are designed. In 2021, a prototype gyrotron was fabricated to validate the electronic–optic system and RF system. The current results obtained support an output power of 210 kW and efficiency of 15.9% through an initial low-power experiment. On the basis of the optimized design, an industrial prototype gyrotron is under fabrication as the heating source for the thermonuclear experimental reactor.

Design verification of the gyrotron diamond output window for the upgrade of the ECRH system at W7-X

The 10 MW electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH) system at the stellarator Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) currently relies on the successful operation of continuous wave (CW) 1 MW, 140 GHz gyrotrons which have chemical vapor deposition (CVD) diamond output windows cooled by the industrial silicon oil Dow Corning 200(R) 5 cSt. The window features a 1.8 mm thick diamond disk brazed to two copper cuffs with an aperture of 88 mm, which are then integrated in a steel housing. In the context of the upgrade of the ECRH system towards higher microwave power, this gyrotron design has been significantly advanced to fulfill the requirement of 1.5 MW CW operation, still at 140 GHz. A prototype of this new gyrotron is under development at Thales, France. This paper reports the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) conjugated heat transfer and structural analyses of the diamond window performed using the commercial code ANSYS V19.2 to investigate its performance at 1.5 MW operation. Furthermore, sensitivity studies were also carried out with respect to the absorbed power in the disk and the mm-wave beam radius at the window location. These analyses showed that the window design of the existing 1 MW gyrotrons still works quite well at higher power operation, thus verifying the performance of the window. Even in the worst case scenario of 1.5 kW absorbed power, the maximum temperature of 215 °C at the disk center can be safely accepted, being below the conservative limit of 250 °C for CVD diamond. In addition, the non-axial symmetric thermal gradients due to the geometry of the cooling channels lead to thermal stresses in the disk and the cuffs. However, they are much lower than the limits. The copper cuffs experience plasticity deformation in the region of the interface with the diamond disk up to a value of about 1.5 mm.

Theoretical investigation on possible operation of a 140 GHz 1 MW gyrotron at 175 GHz for CTS plasma diagnostics at W7-X

Collective Thomson scattering is a common diagnostic technique for ion temperature measurements in experimental fusion plasma reactors. Such a system was successfully installed and commissioned at the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator. For this purpose, a 140 GHz gyrotron of the Electron Cyclotron Resonance Heating system was used as a source of the required probing millimeter (mm)-wave beam. However, accurate measurements in the plasma core were not possible at this heating frequency due to the absorption of the mm-waves and the high electron cyclotron emission background. To suppress these effects and to enhance the accuracy of the measurements, it is required to increase the frequency of the probing beam. In this work, the possibility to operate the same gyrotron, which has its nominal operation at 140 GHz, at a higher frequency is comprehensively investigated.

TCV heating and divertor upgrades

The operational range and the reactor relevance of the TCV experiments are being enhanced by two sets of major upgrades. The first includes the installation of neutral beam injection (NBI) and new electron cyclotron (EC) auxiliary heating sources, to reach ITER relevant beta values and vary the electron to ion temperature ratio. A 15–30 keV, 1 MW tangential NBI system has been operational on TCV since 2015. A second beam of 1 MW, 50–60 keV ion energy, also aligned tangentially but opposite to the first beam, is foreseen to approach beta limits, vary the applied torque through zero and probe suprathermal ion physics. For the EC power, two 0.75 MW gyrotrons at the second harmonic have been installed. The next step will add two 1 MW dual frequency gyrotrons, one of which is currently being commissioned. These heating upgrades will increase the total available power for high-density plasmas from 1.25 MW to 5.0 MW. The rest of the upgrade consists of installing an in-vessel structure to form a divertor chamber of increased closure, to reach higher neutral divertor densities and impurity compression and thereby extend TCV divertor regimes toward more reactor relevant conditions for conventional and advanced divertor configurations. Graphite gas baffles will be installed inside the TCV vessel to delineate divertor and main chamber regions. The first set of baffles features 32 tiles on the high and 64 tiles on the low-field side, with geometry guided by simulations performed using the SOLPS-ITER code. The baffles are expected to be effective for a wide range of divertor configurations, including snowflake and super-X divertors, yet maintain plasma close to the inner wall for improved passive stabilization. The baffle dimensions may be varied in the future to modify the divertor closure. Control of the plasma, neutral and impurity densities will be achieved by a combination of toroidally distributed gas injection valves and impurity seeding, and a possible addition of cryo-condensation pumps. Significant diagnostic developments will be undertaken, to better characterize the divertor plasma, measure power and particle deposition at the strike points, and, specifically, improve our physics understanding of the detachment process.

Enhanced operation of the Eu Ec test facility

A Test Facility (TF) has been designed and installed at SPC to allow for the commissioning of the EU gyrotrons developed in view of their integration to the ITER EC system. The first phase of operation of this TF was dedicated to the development of the EU 2 MW coaxial cavity gyrotron [1,2].The EU gyrotron development for ITER has been reoriented since then and is presently advancing a 170 GHz/1MW/CW gyrotron developed within the EGYC consortium and manufactured by THALES. At the same time, the TF has been enhanced to host the FALCON project [3], consisting in the integration of a second 170 GHz/1MW/CW gyrotron delivered by GYCOM. This new experiment is aiming to test the main RF components of the EC Transmission Line (TL) and of the Upper Launcher system to be installed on ITER.This paper describes the technical modifications brought to the existing TF to comply with the requirements of both 1 MW gyrotrons operation. Effort has been put in switching of the auxiliaries from one tower to the other within a short time (<1 week) while maintaining operator safety and equipment protection. A detailed description of the additional implementation and of the strategy followed to share the main auxiliaries (like the HVPS, the cooling system, the control system, etc.) will be presented. Moreover, most of the new equipment, such as the control hardware, have been designed to fulfil ITER site standards. Finally, the preliminary operation results with this reconfigured TF will be presented.

Thermal design and simulation of the collector for 140GHz megawatt-class gyrotron on ITER

Thermal co-simulation for the collector of a 140GHz, 1MW gyrotron is achieved in this paper. Thermal losses due to the particle collision in collector from the CST Particle Studio are directly applied to the thermal analysis by the CST Multi-Physics Studio. The convective heat transfer coefficient of copper with different water flow rate has been discussed. In the simulation, the maximum temperature in the collector changes from 419°C to 245°C, which is achieved respectively at the water flow rates from 5m/s to 15m/s. The thermal deformation caused by different temperature distribution in the collector changes from 0.551mm to 0.253mm, which provides physical analysis for the collector.

Developments towards 1MW Gyrotron Test Facility at ITER-India

ITER-India, the Indian domestic agency for the ITER project, has the responsibility to supply a set of two high power Gyrotron sources (1 MW, 170 GHz, 3600 s) along with the auxiliary systems for Electron Cyclotron Heating &amp; Current Drive applications. For such high power Gyrotron systems, one of the challenging areas is the system integration and establishment of reliable integrated system performance. ITER-India plans to establish the integrated Gyrotron system performance that essentially meets the ITER requirements in a Gyrotron Test Facility which is specifically being developed at ITER-India. This paper discusses about the recent updates towards the Test Facility development which includes, development of cost effective &amp; modular Body Power Supply (BPS), Industrial grade prototype interlock &amp; protection modules, a Gyrotron field simulator and cooling water distribution system.

Studies towards an upgraded 1.5 MW gyrotron for W7-X

Studies towards a 1.5 MW, 140 GHz CW gyrotron, with the capability of MW-class operation also at 175 GHz, are ongoing at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in view of a possible future upgrade of the ECRH system of the stellarator W7-X. The upgrade of the existing 1.0 MW, 140 GHz European gyrotron for W7-X has been chosen as a development path. Detailed designs of the cavity, the non-linear uptaper, and the quasi-optical launcher for the upgraded gyrotron have been obtained and have been validated numerically. In parallel, a mode generator, intended for low-power tests of the quasi-optical mode converter system of the upgraded gyrotron, has been designed, manufactured, and successfully tested.

Design and development of the ITER CTS diagnostic

The Collective Thomson Scattering (CTS) diagnostic will be a primary diagnostic for measuring the dynamics of the confined fusion born alpha particles in ITER and will be the only diagnostic for alphas below 1.7 MeV [1]. The probe beam of the CTS diagnostic comes from a 60 GHz 1 MW gyrotron operated in a ~100 Hz modulation sequence. In the plasma, the probing beam will be scattered off fluctuations primarily due to the dynamics of the ions. Seven fixed receiver mirrors will pick up scattered radiation (the CTS signal) from seven measurement volumes along the probe beam covering the cross section of the plasma. The diagnostic is planned to provide a temporal resolution of ~100 ms and a spatial resolution of ~a/4 in the core and ~a/20 near the plasma edge where a = 2.0 m is the nominal minor radius of ITER. The front-end quasi-optics will be installed in an equatorial port plug (EPP#12). A particular challenge will be to pass the probing beam through the fundamental electron cyclotron resonance, which is located in the port plug (R=10.3 m) for the nominal magnetic field Bt = 5.3 T. Hence, particular mitigation actions against arcing have to be applied. The status of the design and specific challenges will be discussed.

Analysis of an actively-cooled coaxial cavity in a 170 GHz 2 MW gyrotron using the multi-physics computational tool MUCCA

Continuous Wave gyrotrons are the key elements for Electron Cyclotron Resonance Heating and Current Drive (ECRH&CD) in present fusion experiments and future fusion reactors. In the frame of the EUROfusion activities, a 170 GHz, 2 MW short-pulse (∼ 1 ms), water-cooled coaxial gyrotron, already tested at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), is being upgraded for operation at longer pulses (∼ 100–1000 ms).Here we use the MUlti-physiCs tool for the integrated simulation of the CAvity (MUCCA), recently developed in collaboration between Politecnico di Torino and KIT, to analyze the evolution of the operating condition of the coaxial gyrotron cavity, self-consistently coupling thermal-hydraulic, thermo-mechanical and electro-dynamic models. The main results are presented in terms of evolution of temperature, heat load and deformation of the heated surface of the resonator and of the coaxial insert during the first few seconds of operation. We show that the system evolves towards stable operating conditions (no beam loss), with a peak temperature strongly dependent on the cooling configuration, where a large room for the improvement of the current cavity cooling design is found.

Development of 170 GHz, 1 MW gyrotron with high-order TE31,11 mode oscillation for ITER EC system

A TE31,11 mode gyrotron has being developed to improve the output power for the ITER electron cyclotron (EC) system. Strong mode competition having counter-rotating modes in both the high and/or low field sides is, in general, the typical issue for high order mode oscillations. Active anode voltage control and beam radius control were introduced to overcome this issue and obtain stable 1 MW oscillation. The TE31,11 mode was oscillated in a hard-self excitation region and the efficiency was improved up to 50%. Long pulse operation of output power of 1 MW with total efficiency of 46% for 230 s was also performed. Oscillations of over–1 MW power of 1.1 MW and 1.2 MW for 2 s pulse were achieved.

RF Behavior of Cylindrical Cavity Based 240 GHz, 1 MW Gyrotron for Future Tokamak System

In this paper, we present the RF behavior of conventional cylindrical interaction cavity for 240 GHz, 1 MW gyrotron for futuristic plasma fusion reactors. Very high-order TE mode is searched for this gyrotron to minimize the Ohmic wall loading at the interaction cavity. The mode selection process is carried out rigorously to analyze the mode competition and design feasibility. The cold cavity analysis and beam-wave interaction computation are carried out to finalize the cavity design. The detail parametric analyses for interaction cavity are performed in terms of mode stability, interaction efficiency and frequency. In addition, the design of triode type magnetron injection gun is also discussed. The electron beam parameters such as velocity ratio and velocity spread are optimized as per the requirement at interaction cavity. The design studies presented here confirm the realization of CW, 1 MW power at 240 GHz frequency at TE46,17 mode.

Prototyping high-gradient mm-wave accelerating structures

We present single-cell accelerating structures designed for high-gradient testing at 110 GHz. The purpose of this work is to study the basic physics of ultrahigh vacuum RF breakdown in high-gradient RF accelerators. The accelerating structures are π-mode standing-wave cavities fed with a TM01 circular waveguide. The structures are fabricated using precision milling out of two metal blocks, and the blocks are joined with diffusion bonding and brazing. The impact of fabrication and joining techniques on the cell geometry and RF performance will be discussed. First prototypes had a measured Q0 of 2800, approaching the theoretical design value of 3300. The geometry of these accelerating structures are as close as practical to singlecell standing-wave X-band accelerating structures more than 40 of which were tested at SLAC. This wealth of X-band data will serve as a baseline for these 110 GHz tests. The structures will be powered with short pulses from a MW gyrotron oscillator. RF power of 1 MW may allow an accelerating gradient of 400 MeV/m to be reached.

Multi-physics analysis of a 1 MW gyrotron cavity cooled by mini-channels

The interaction cavity of the European 170GHz, 1MW Continuous Wave (CW) gyrotron for ITER, which could also be water-cooled using mini-channels as recently proposed, experiences during operation a very large heat load (>15MW/m2) localized on a very short (<1cm) axial length. Such heat loads are typical for high power gyrotrons.As the thermal deformation of the cavity influences the electromagnetic field structure and consequently the gyrotron operation, the analysis of the cavity performance requires the simultaneous solution of the coupled thermal-hydraulic, thermo-mechanic and electro-magnetic fields. In this paper, the thermal behaviour of the cavity under nominal heat load is computed first by CFD. Then a 3D thermo-mechanical model of the cavity is developed, based on the temperature maps computed by CFD, to evaluate the resulting deformation of the inner cavity surface. Finally the deformation is used to compute the updated heat load coming from the electromagnetic field generated by the electron beam in the deformed cavity, which becomes the input for a new iteration of the thermal-hydraulic, thermal-mechanical and electromagnetic analyses. It is shown that this iterative procedure converges to a self-consistent heat-load/temperature-field/deformation-field picture in nominal operating conditions, without exceeding a temperature of ∼230°C on the inner surface of the cavity.

Conceptual designs of E × B multistage depressed collectors for gyrotrons

Multistage depressed collectors are challenges for high-power, high-frequency fusion gyrotrons. Two concepts exist in the literature: (1) unwinding the spent electron beam cyclotron motion utilizing non-adiabatic transitions of magnetic fields and (2) sorting and collecting the electrons using the E × B drift. To facilitate the collection by the drift, the hollow electron beam can be transformed to one or more thin beams before applying the sorting. There are many approaches, which can transform the hollow electron beam to thin beams; among them, two approaches similar to the tilted electric field collectors of traveling wave tubes are conceptually studied in this paper: the first one transforms the hollow circular electron beam to an elongated elliptic beam, and then the thin elliptic beam is collected by the E × B drift; the second one splits an elliptic or a circular electron beam into two arc-shaped sheet beams; these two parts are collected individually. The functionality of these concepts is proven by CST simulations. A model of a three-stage collector for a 170 GHz, 1 MW gyrotron using the latter approach shows 76% collector efficiency while taking secondary electrons and realistic electron beam characteristics into account.

Design and development of mode launcher for high frequency Gyrotron

In this paper, we describe the design and development of helical cut smooth wall mode launcher for high frequency and high power Gyrotron. A Vlasov-type helical cut mode launcher for converting TE22,6 mode to a Gaussian mode has been designed for 120GHz, 1MW Gyrotron. The initial design of mode launcher has been optimized using LOT/SURF-3D software. The mode launcher diameter and length are optimized considering the minimum return loss and the minimum insertion loss by using CST microwave studio. The return loss (S11) and insertion loss (S21) performance of helical cut smooth wall mode launcher have been obtained using CST-Microwave Studio. The fabrication of Vlasov-type helical cut mode launcher for 120GHz Gyrotron has also been carried out.