Procurement Arrangement for neutral beam power supplies signed

24 Jul 2009 - Beatrix Schunke, Senior Technical Officer, Neutral Beam Section

The drawing shows the position and the size of the powerful neutral beams (top right) that form part of ITER's heating system. Although there are only two heating neutral beams foreseen in ITER at the moment, the third beamline pictured is a possible upgrade option. Below the heating neutral beams, in green, the diagnostic neutral beam is pictured.

On Friday, 10 July, ITER Organization and the European Domestic Agency signed a Procurement Arrangement in Barcelona for the power supply system for ITER's neutral beam injectors. The procurement for this system will be shared between Europe—representing about one-third of the package—and Japan; the Japanese Domestic Agency will be signing the Procurement Arrangement for its portion shortly.

Neutral beam injection is part of the ITER heating and current drive systems. Its purpose is to deliver a high-energy beam of neutral deuterium atoms that is used for plasma heating as well as current drive and current profile control. ITER will be equipped with two neutral beam heating and current drive injectors. Each one will deliver a deuterium beam of 16.5 MW (initial total 33 MW), with particle energies of 1 MeV, and will be able to operate for long pulses up to 3,600 seconds.

The power supplies are an important and challenging part of this system and represent 64 percent of the investment for the ITER neutral beams. The signing of the procurement document by Europe is encouraging news for the Neutral Beam Test Facility (NBTF) which is to be built in Padua, Italy.

The power supplies for one of the two injectors will be delivered to the test facility in Padua, and are on the critical path. Timely delivery of the power supplies will allow the NBTF to complete its program according to schedule and thereby timely production of important information on the operation of the heating neutral beam injectors of ITER.