Report of recent experiments with the European 1 MW, 170 GHz CW and SP prototype gyrotrons for ITER

¹ IHM, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Kaiserstr. 12, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany
² European Joint Undertaking for ITER and the Development of Fusion Energy (F4E), Barcelona, E-08019, Spain
³ Swiss Plasma Center (SPC), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
⁴ Institute of Plasma Physics “P.Caldirola”, National Research Council of Italy, Milan, Italy
⁵ Faculty of Physics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Zografou, GR-157 84, Athens, Greece
⁶ Thales Electron Devices, 2 rue Marcel Dassault, Vélizy-Villacoublay, F-78141, France
⁷ IGVP, University of Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 31, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany

^* Corresponding author: zisis.ioannidis@kit.edu

Published online: 25 March 2019

Abstract

The European 1 MW, 170 GHz industrial CW prototype gyrotron has been designed within EGYC (European GYrotron Consortium) in collaboration with the industrial partner Thales Electron Devices (TED) and under the coordination of Fusion for Energy (F4E). This is a conventional (hollow) cavity gyrotron that is based on the 1 MW, 170 GHz short-pulse (SP) modular gyrotron, which has been designed and manufactured by KIT in collaboration with TED. The SP prototype has been tested in multiple experimental campaigns since 2015 and the nominal cavity mode TE_32,9 is exited at 170.1 GHz, producing RF power above 1 MW with 35 % interaction efficiency. The first phase of the experiments with the CW industrial gyrotron was successfully completed at KIT in 2016, verifying most of the ITER specifications. Short pulses (<10ms) deliver RF power higher than 0.9 MW with a total efficiency of 26 % (in non-depressed collector operation). The Gaussian mode content of the RF beam is 97 %. Pulses with duration of 180 s (limited by the high-voltage power supply at KIT) produce power more than 0.8 MW with maximum efficiency 38 % (in depressed collector operation). In this work the achievements with the SP and the CW prototype gyrotrons are summarized.