Analysis of MW-scale Beam Extraction of EAST Neutral Beam Injector Test-stand

Neutral beam injection has been recognized as one of the most effective means for plasma heating. The preliminary data of 50 keV, 100 s and 80 keV, 1 s beam extraction have been obtained on the EAST neutral beam injector (NBI) test-stand. In this paper, beam energy distribution deposited on each heat load component and neutral efficiency of EAST-NBI has been measured using water-flow calorimetry and beam divergence angle and perveance have been analyzed according to the data obtained from the thermocouples installed in the calorimeters.     

Water Flow Calorimetry System of EAST Neutral Beam Injector

Neutral beam injection (NBI) is recognized as one of the most effective means of plasma heating. The EAST NBI water flow calorimetry system (WFCS) based on PCI extensions for instrumentation (PXI) was established, it can measure temperature rise and flow rate of cooling water of the heat load components, and achieve beam power distribution and neutralization efficiency. Experimental data obtained from WFCS are feedback of the ion source operation state and direct the operation parameter optimization of the ion source. Experimental results show that the WFCS is stable, reliable, and meet the experimental requirements fully.     

Analysis of Power Distribution on Beamline Components at Different Neutralization Efficiencies on NBI Test Stand

Neutral beam injection is recognized as one of the most effective means for plasma heating. According to the research plan of the EAST physics experiment, two sets of neutral beam injector(4–8 MW, 10–100 s) were built and operated in 2014. Neutralization efficiency is one of the important parameters for neutral beam. High neutralization efficiency can not only improve injection power at the same beam energy, but also decrease the power deposited on the heat-load components in the neutral beam injector(NBI). This research explores the power deposition distribution at different neutralization efficiencies on the beamline components of the NBI device. This work has great significance for guiding the operation of EAST-NBI, especially in long pulse and high power operation, which can reduce the risk of thermal damage of the beamline components and extend the working life of the NBI device.     

Thermal analysis of EAST neutral beam injectors for long-pulse beam operation

Two sets of neutral beam injectors(NBI-1 and NBI-2) have been mounted on the EAST tokamak since 2014. NBI-1 and NBI-2 are co-direction and counter-direction, respectively. As with indepth physics and engineering study of EAST, the ability of long pulse beam injection should be required in the NBI system. For NBIs, the most important and difficult thing that should be overcome is heat removal capacity of heat loaded components for long-pulse beam extraction. In this article, the thermal state of the components of EAST NBI is investigated using water flow calorimetry and thermocouple temperatures. Results show that(1) operation parameters have an obvious influence on the heat deposited on the inner components of the beamline,(2) a suitable operation parameter can decrease the heat loading effectively and obtain longer beam pulse length, and(3) under the cooling water pressure of 0.25 MPa, the predicted maximum beam pulse length will be up to 260 s with 50 keV beam energy by a duty factor of 0.5. The results present that, in this regard, the EAST NBI-1 system has the ability of long-pulse beam injection.     

全超导非圆截面托卡马克中性束注入窗口材料活化研究

中性束注入加热为全超导非圆截面托卡马克(EAST)主要辅助加热方式之一.伴随着中性束注入加热,等离子体中子出射强度可达到1014 n/s.由于中性束注入窗口具有较大的开口尺寸,窗口泄露的大量中子可能影响系统的安全稳定运行.本文基于EAST中性束二维模型和蒙特卡洛程序MCNP与材料活化程序FISPACT,研究EAST两条...     

Calculation of Neutral Beam Injected Torque and Its Effective Tangency Major Radius for EAST

Toroidal rotation has been recognized to have significant effects on the transport and magnetohydrodynarnic(MHD) stability of tokamak plasmas.Neutral beam injection(NBI) is the most effective rotation generation method on current,tokamak devices.To estimate the effective injected torque of the first neutral beam injection system on EAST,a simplified analytic method was derived.Calculated beam torque values were validated by those obtained from the NUBEAM code simulation.According to the results,for the collisional torque,the effective tangential radius for torque deposition is close to the beam tangency major radius.However,due to the dielectric property of tokamak plasma,the equivalent tangency major radius of the J×B torque is equal to the average major radius of the magnetic flux surface.The results will be useful for the research of toroidal momentum confinement and the experimental analysis of momentum transport related with NBI on EAST.     

Analysis of the Pipe Heat Loss of the Water Flow Calorimetry System in EAST Neutral Beam Injector

Neutral beam injection heating is one of the main auxiliary heating methods in controllable nuclear fusion research. In the EAST neutral beam injector, a water flow calorimetry(WFC) system is applied to measure the heat load on the electrode system of the ion source and the heat loading components of the beamline. Due to the heat loss in the return water pipe, there are some measuring errors for the current WFC system. In this paper, the errors were measured experimentally and analyzed theoretically, which lay a basis for the exact calculation of beam power deposition distribution and neutralization efficiency.     

Overview of Development Status for EAST-NBI System

The neutral beam injection(NBI) system was developed on the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak(EAST) for plasma heating and current driving. This paper presents the brief history, design, development, and the main experimental results of the RD of neutral beam injector on the test bed and on EAST. In particular, it will describe:(1) how the two beamlines with a total beam power of 8 MW were developed;(2) the design of the EAST-NBI system including the high power ion source, main vacuum chamber, inner components, beam diagnostic system and sub-system;(3) the experimental results of beamline-1 on the summer campaign of EAST in 2014 and,(4) the status of beamline-2 and the future plan of EAST-NBIs.     

EAST托卡马克的中性束注入方案

高能中性束注入(Neutral beam injection,NBI)是核聚变装置托卡马克采用的芯部辅助加热和非感应电流驱动主要手段之一.本文介绍了国家大科学工程全超导托卡马克实验装置(Experimental advanced super-conductingtokamak,EAST)上的高能NBI加热方案及注入器的工程要求,并讨论了中性束在EAST等离子体中的传输等相关问题.     

Achievement of 100 s Long Pulse Neutral Beam Extraction in EAST Neutral Beam Injector

Neutral beam injection (NBI) is recognized as one of the most e®ective means for plasma heating. A 100 s long pulse neutral beam with 30 keV beam energy, 10 A beam current and a 100 s long pulse modulating neutral beam with 50 keV beam energy, 16 A beam current were achieved in the EAST neutral beam injector on the test-stand. The preliminary results suggest that EAST-NBI system initially possess the ability of long pulse beam extraction.     

Numerical Simulation of Non-Inductive Current Driven Scenario in EAST Using Neutral Beam Injection

For achieving the scientific mission of long pulse and high performance operation,experimental advanced superconducting tokamak(EAST) applies fully superconducting magnet technology and is equiped with high power auxiliary heating system.Besides RF(Radio Frequency) wave heating,neutral beam injection(NBI) is an effective heating and current drive method in fusion research.NBCD(Neutral Beam Current Drive) as a viable non-inductive current drive source plays an important role in quasi-steady state operating scenario for tokamak.The non-inductive current driven scenario in EAST only by NBI is predicted using the TSC/NUBEAM code.At the condition of low plasma current and moderate plasma density,neutral beam injection heats the plasma effectively and NBCD plus bootstrap current accounts for a large proportion among the total plasma current for the flattop time.     

Development of a Data Acquisition Control System for the First NBI on EAST

Neutral beam injection （NBI） heating is one of the most efficient auxiliary plasma heating methods for fusion devices. The data acquisition control system （DACS） with PXI （pe- ripheral component interconnect extensions for instrumentation） data acquisition card for the first NBI system in the experimental advanced superconducting tokamak （EAST） is presented in this paper. As an important sub-system, DACS is designed to obtain physical measurement signals in the EAST NBI system and to deal and store these data with the Lempel-Ziv-Oberhumer （LZO） lossless data compression algorithm, as well as offer convenient data call-back and access inter- faces to the user for examining and analyzing the data. Experimental results show that accurate data will ensure that researchers correctly analyze it and then properly adjust the experimental parameters or operation, so DACS should take a large step in improving experimental efficiency. Tile hardware and software sections are briefly presented in this paper, and now this system has been tested to be able to work reliably and steadily.     

Polarization and Mode Control of EAST 140 GHz ECRH&CD System

The 140 GHz electron cyclotron heating and current drive (ECRH&CD) project was launched in 2011 on EAST tokamak facility, which is designed to launch 4 MW of total power for the duration up to 1,000 s into the plasma. The heating and current drive efficiencies depend on the wave coupling mode in plasma and the coupling performance relies on polarization characteristics of injected beam, so polarization control is necessary for efficient plasma heating and current drive. Two polarizer miter bends will be used to control the wave polarization for each transmission line on EAST ECRH&CD system, any required wave polarization can be produced by adjusting the mirror rotation angle of each polarizer miter bend. This work mainly shows the calculated polarizer mirror settings as a function of the injection angles for pure second extraordinary harmonic mode coupling.     

Experimental Results of Ion Beam Extraction of High-Current Ion Source for EAST Neutral Beam Injector

The first campaign of ion beam extraction tests are completed for EAST NBI high current ion source. The hydrogen ion beam with beam voltage of 80 keV is extracted from tetrode accelerator system. During the experiment, the characteristics of arc discharge and ion beam extraction are studied. The arc power reaches 120 kW and the extracted ion beam power reaches 3 MW. The relationship of some key parameters of arc and beam are investigated, and the details are described in this paper.     

Design and Development of a Power Supply System for NBI Test Stand of EAST

A neutral beam injector (NBI) test stand was constructed to develop a multi-megawatt prototype ion source as an auxiliary heating system on experimental advanced superconducting tokamak. A power supply system for the NBI test stand components such as a set of dc power supplies for plasma generator, a dc high voltage power supply of a tetrode accelerator, a transmission line and a surge energy suppressor. Stable arc discharges of the plasma generator with hydrogen gases for 100 s long pulse have been produced by six Langmuir probes feedback loop regulation mode to control the arc power supply. The 4 MW hydrogen ion beam of 1 s is extracted with beam energy of 80 keV and the beam current of 52 A. The dc high voltage power supply for the plasma grid of the prototype ion source was designed to contribute maximum voltage of 100 kV and current of 100 A. The high voltage power output is continuously adjustable to satisfy with plasma physics experiment in operation frequency of 10 Hz. To prevent damage of the beam source at high voltage breakdown, core snubber using deltamax soft magnetic materials have been adopted to satisfy the input energy into the accelerator from the power supply can be reduced to about 5 J in the case of breakdown at 80 kV. For the transmission line, a disc shape multi cable coaxial configuration was adopted and which the dimension of the diameter is 140 mm at the core snubber. The major issues of discharge characteristics with long pulse and beam extraction with high power for the prototype ion source were investigated on the NBI test stand.     

Simulation of EAST off-axis neutral beam heating and current drive

The capability of off-axis neutral beam heating and current drive has been investigated with NUBEAM for Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST). Three different approaches to realize off-axis Neutral Beam Injection (NBI) have been studied. Simulation results for on- and off-axis NBI are reported. The effects of the alignment of NBI relative to the magnetic field pitch on off-axis neutral beam heating and current drive are observed and discussed qualitatively. By comparing the numerical results, a most favorable off-axis NBI configuration is recommended. The capability to control sawtooth is also investigated by comparing locations of the q = 1 rational surface and the peak of the fast ion density profile.     

Evaluation of NBI absorption and fast ion stored energy to improve thermal energy confinement time calculation in EAST

The absorption of neutral beam power and the fast ion stored energy in EAST plasmas with neutral beam injection(NBI)is analyzed to improve the calculation of thermal energy confinement time.The neutral beam power absorption and fast ion stored energy are systematically calculated using the TRANSP code,through the investigation of global parameters including plasma current,line averaged density and beam energy.Results have shown that scaling laws for the NBI absorption coefficient and fast ion energy rate are obtained through statistical analysis.A comparison of the confinement improvement factor H98y2 with these new scaling laws against those assuming fixed coefficients is given.     

EAST强流离子源电源系统的初步测试运行

测试NBI大功率强流离子源的综合测试台正在建设,已研制了离子源等离子体发生器电源系统、等离子体电极高压电源及梯度极分压器、抑制极负高压电源等电源系统,以及高压传输线及缓冲器,在测试台上开展了对EAST中性束注入器第一台兆瓦级强流离子源样机进行整体电源系统测试和离子源起弧放电的初步测试,完成了离子源电源系统初步性能测试及...     

Predictive Simulations of Plasma Heating and Current Drive by Neutral Beam Injection on EAST

Long pulse and high performance steady-state operation is the main scientific mission of experimental advanced superconducting tokamak (EAST). In order to achieve this objective, high-power auxiliary heating systems are essential. Radio frequency (RF) wave heating and neutral beam injection (NBI) are two principal methods. NBI is an effective method of plasma heating and current drive, and it has been used in many magnetic confinement fusion devices. Based on the plasma equilibrium of EAST (Li et al., Plasma Phys Control Fusion 55:125008, 2013) plus previous EAST experimental data used as initial conditions, the NBI module (Polevoi et al., JAERI-Data, 1997) employed in automated system for transport analysis (ASTRA) code (Pereverzev et al., IPP-Report, 2002) is applied to predict the effects of plasma heating and current drive with different neutral beam injection power levels. At certain levels of plasma densities and plasma current densities, the simulation results show that the NBI heats plasma effectively, also increases the proportions of NB current and bootstrap current among total current significantly.     

The Influence of Neutral Beam Injection on the Heating and Current Drive with Electron Cyclotron Wave on EAST

Both neutral beam injection(NBI) and electron cyclotron resonance heating(ECRH) have been applied on the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak(EAST)in the 2015 campaign. In order to achieve more effective heating and current drive, the effects of NBI on the heating and current drive with electron cyclotron wave(ECW) are analyzed utilizing the code TORAY and experimental data in the shot #54411 and #54417. According to the experimental and simulated results, for the heating with ECW, NBI can improve the heating efficiency and move the power deposition place towards the inside of the plasma. On the other hand, for the electron cyclotron current drive(ECCD), NBI can also improve the efficiency of ECCD and move the place of ECCD inward. These results will be valuable for the center heating, the achievement of fully non-inductive current drive operation and the suppression of magnetohydrodynamic(MHD) instabilities with ECW on EAST or ITER with many auxiliary heating methods.