Compact Electric Power System for Fusion Reactor
The issue of the Tokamak fusion reactor is its large area occupied by its power supply, which is about half of the total building area for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), together with the compatibility between the site grid and Tokamak loads during the plasma operation period. ITER is now implemented with Tokamak, which requires about 1 GVar reactive power to compensate its power system for superconducting magnets where about 0.2 GVar is transferred from France Electrical Power Network, the other 0.75 GVar is generated by the system of reactive power compensation and harmonic filtering, the standard VSC configuration. ITER can experimentally generate 500-MW fusion thermal power in 400 s long pulse mode. It could only generate about 500 MW/3 = 167 MWe active electric power if it is to be configured with pressured water reactor due to the fact that it is only about 1/3 conversion efficiency from thermal energy to electric energy. For such fusion machine, the requirement for reactive power is much larger than the active power it generates. Based on this requirement, one efficiency and compact pulsed synchronous generator is suggested for this purpose. It can generate not only the fundamental reactive power to compensate and stabilize the power network with low internal impedance but also the active power for outputting power to the network with exciting controller of the generator. Due to its two purposes in one device configuration, it becomes compact and reliable by being implemented in the design of future fusion power plant for demonstration. Some consideration has been done to the special low impedance synchronous generator, which is intended for the concept design of Chinese Fusion Engineering Testing Reactor, targeting the compact electric power system for superconducting Tokamak fusion reactor.
A new generation of pulsed power supplies for experimental physics based on supercapacitors
Big physics experiments often require high power peaks for a short duration with low duty cycle. Even though the effective energy may be relatively small, the power supplies of these experiments can be critical from the technical, economic, and environmental points of view. This paper shows that the supercapacitor technology can simplify many power supply systems and can extend the scenarios explored by the experiments. Supercapacitors were already proposed and introduced for many applications, but their use is particularly advantageous in big physics experiments, especially when the current is high and the voltage is relatively low. This statement will be supported by some models and case studies based on real experimental devices (operating or that are going to be commissioned) with currents up to 60 kA. The presented designs based on supercapacitors simplify the existing apparatus, reduce the costs, increase the local power availability, and even extend the possible experimental activities. The reported analyses and results are mainly focused on nuclear fusion researches, but can be easily applied to many other fields.
Reduction of Surface Flashover of the Beam Screen of the LHC Injection Kickers
The LHC injection kicker magnets include beam screens to shield the ferrite yokes against wake fields resulting from the high intensity beam. The screening is provided by conductors lodged in the inner wall of a ceramic support tube. Operation with increasingly higher bunch intensity, and narrow bunches, now requires improved ferrite screening. This will be implemented by additional conductors; however the good high-voltage behaviour of the kicker magnets must not be compromised by the supplementary screening. Extensive studies and optimisations have been carried out, to better satisfy the often conflicting requirements for low beam coupling impedance, fast magnetic field rise-time, high vacuum and good high voltage behaviour. A new configuration is proposed which reduces significantly the electric field associated with the screen conductors and the secondary electron yield of the surface of the ceramic tube. Results of high voltage test results are also presented.