Thermohydraulic Behaviors of KSTAR PF Superconducting Magnet System in Operation
Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) is a superconducting tokamak which adopts and NbTi as superconductors and it has been operated since 2008. One of main issues is the performance of superconducting magnet system in the real operation. In view of this issue, the KSTAR magnet system shows the sufficient operational capability through the whole campaigns. For example, we have already achieved the maximum Toroidal Field (TF) current and the bipolar pulsed Poloidal Field (PF) operation up to ± 10 kA. It is very important to operate stably the full superconducting magnet system such as KSTAR and ITER. Each KSTAR magnet consists of Cable-In-Conduit Conductors (CICC) cooled by forced flow of the supercritical helium in cryogenic temperature. The temperature, pressure and mass flow rate of coolant are interacted organically inside of CICC and the behaviors are also complicated during operation. The pressure drop between inlet and outlet of coil, the temperature increasing in accordance with coil current variation, and so on are critical issues related with the flexibility and reliability of superconducting tokamak. Most of all, we agree that the analysis of thermohydraulic behavior is absolutely needed for more stable operation and higher plasma performance. So we are checking the related data and the tendency at every campaign and we are optimizing the operational procedure to fit the plasma scenario. In this paper, we introduce the significant thermohydraulic behaviors of KSTAR PF coils up to now.
Thermohydraulic Characteristics of KSTAR Magnet System Using ITER-like Superconductors
Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) has been operated since 2008 and third campaign is now in progress. KSTAR is the world’s only superconducting tokamak constructed of Nb3Sn having a cable-in-conduit conductor (CICC) formed into a rectangular shape with no central hole for helium passage. Most importantly, KSTAR is the world’s only tokamak using an integrated full magnet system with ITER-like superconductors. KSTAR has already achieved maximum TF current of 36.2 kA with the bipolar operation of PF coils during second campaign. The thermohydraulic characteristics and behavior including the temperature variation during operation, the pressure drop between inlet and outlet of coil and the friction factor of CICC were investigated. This paper introduces the thermohydraulic results of KSTAR magnet system up to now and offers suggestions for ITER and other superconducting tokamak under construction.
Quench Detection Based on Voltage Measurement for the KSTAR Superconducting Coils
To protect the KSTAR (Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research) superconducting coils against a quench, the quench detection system based on voltage measurement was fabricated. It used a detect/dump scheme which detects the presence of non-recovering normal zones and activates a dump circuit that transfers most of the stored energy into a dump resistor. Even though it is desirable to discharge the coil energy as fast as possible after quench detection, a time delay between the quench detection and the complete dump circuit actuation will be necessary in order that the quench voltage is to be distinguished from various noises. The quench threshold voltage and the delay time should be set before operation for quench voltage detection so that the maximum hot-spot temperature could be limited to 150 K. This paper describes the hardware techniques to prevent the malfunction of the quench detection due to voltage noises arising from the KSTAR operating scenarios. During the first operation of the KSTAR machine, the inductive voltages and other voltage noises were measured and effectively compensated below voltage thresholds. A quench did not occur and the quench detection system was well operated without any false activation.