KSTAR to celebrate construction completion

After a 12 year period of construction, the Korean Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) is going to celebrate its completion this week. On September 14 the National Fusion Research Laboratory in Daejon, 160 kilometres south of Seoul, will unveil the world's newest experimental tokamak machine that will play a crucial role in the development of fusion power.

KSTAR is designed as a steady-state capable fusion device with a fully superconducting magnet system, including Toroidal Field (TF) coils, Central Solenoid (CS) coils, and Poloidal Field (PF) coils and long-pulse D-shape plasma characteristics. With this outline KSTAR will serve, besides following its own ambitious research program, as an ITER pilot plant, providing useful technical knowledge and data for the future operation of ITER.

KSTAR is expected to operate over 4 to 5 years with high power long-pulse operation. The testbed unit stands nine metres tall and measures nine metres in diameter. First plasma is expected in 2008.