Indian "beam dump" reaches neutral beam test facility

In ITER, high-energy beams of neutral deuterium particles will be used for heating the plasma as well as for driving the current and controlling the current profile. Produced by powerful neutral beam injectors, ITER's neutral beams will be the first high-energy beams at 1MV based on a negative ion source.

Well in advance of operation, ITER neutral beam technology will be tested at the PRIMA Neutral Beam Test Facility in Padua, Italy, currently under construction. Europe, Japan and India are all contributing components.

On 22 December 2014, the Indian Domestic Agency delivered its first component to the facility—a beam dump—destined for the full-scale ITER ion source test bed called SPIDER. The delivery was also the first in-kind delivery carried out by ITER India under the terms of a Procurement Arrangement.

The SPIDER beam dump is designed to absorb the ion beam power up to 6.1 MW extracted from the SPIDER beam source; its construction is based on heat transfer elements that work using hyper-vapotron technology. The beam dump was manufactured by PVA Tepla AG in Germany under a contract with ITER India.

The manufacturing activities were monitored and assessed according to the approved Manufacturing and Inspection Plan by ITER India and the ITER Organization, who also ensured the implementation of ITER quality requirements during the execution of the project. Factory acceptance tests were successfully performed at the manufacturing site and witnessed by ITER India, the ITER Organization and the end-user Consorzio RFX (host to PRIMA).

Following the successful delivery of the SPIDER beam dump to the Consorzio RFX site in December, the component was placed in storage to await its integration with the SPIDER vacuum vessel.