India signs off on ion cyclotron power sources

The Head of the Indian Domestic Agency, Shishir Deshpande (left) and Kaname Ikeda signing Procurement Arrangement 31. Also in the picture: Aparajita Mukherjee, ion cyclotron project manager at ITER India, and ITER Deputy Director-General Dhiraj Bora.

Today, Friday 5 February, ITER Director-General Kaname Ikeda and the Head of the Indian Domestic Agency, Shishir Deshpande, signed a Procurement Arrangement for the supply of the radio-frequency power sources for the ITER ion cyclotron heating and current drive system.

The layout of the ion cyclotron heating and current drive system: A: RF power sources; B, D: transmission lines; C: hybrid splitters; E: gallery transmission lines; F: port cell matching systems; G: antenna plugs; H: to Hot Cell Facility; J: to Port Plug Test Facility. The high power load system and the transmission line switches are not shown.

The ion cyclotron heating and current drive system will provide radio-frequency (RF) heating and current drive to the ITER plasma. A total of 20 MW of RF power will be initially avail¬able from the system. The system is composed of the antenna port plugs plus matching systems, the transmission lines, the RF power sources, and auxiliary sub-systems, and services such as decoupling units, control systems and test facilities (see picture).

The Procurement Arrangement signed today has a value of approximately EUR 27.8 million. And, for the record, it is Procurement Arrangement number 31.