ITER ECH Transmission Line System Design and Status

¹ Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA
² ITER Organization, St. Paul-lez-Durance, 13067 France
³ École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Swiss Plasma Center (SPC), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
⁴ United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, Culham Science Centre, Abingdon, U.K
⁵ GEM Technology International, Oak Ridge, TN 37830, USA
⁶ National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology, Ibaraki, Japan

^* Corresponding author: hansongr@ornl.gov

Published online: 15 November 2024

Abstract

The electron cyclotron (EC) heating & current drive (H&CD) system on ITER provides plasma heating by generating, transmitting, and launching high-intensity, high-frequency (170 GHz) electromagnetic wave energy steerable across the plasma cross-section. The transmission line (TL) subsystem connects the Matching Optics Unit (MOU) on each of the 24 gyrotrons to the 32 feed points in the four upper launchers and the 24 feed points in the equatorial launcher. Each TL must be able to operate at up to 1.2 MW of input power for up to 1 hour pulse lengths. The TL system contains 50 mm water-cooled corrugated waveguide, 90^o miter bends, 140^o miter bends, polarizer miter bend pairs, switches, expansion units, pumpouts, DC breaks, MOU-TL adapters, Radio Frequency (RF) loads, and isolation shutter valves. A detailed finite element analysis has been used to verify the thermo-mechanical performance of each component. The microwave performance has been analyzed using a 2-D electromagnetic code combined with a Monte Carlo code. This approach allows the impact of manufacturing and installation tolerances to be assessed and optimized to provide a high probability of achieving the system performance requirements. Prototypes of the waveguide and TL components have been fabricated and tested at high-power. Production contracts are now being issued for fabrication and delivery of the waveguide and components to ITER.