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.
Fabrication of the KSTAR superconducting CICC
A superconducting cable-in-conduit conductor (CICC) is adopted for the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) superconducting magnet system which consists of 16 TF coils and 14 PF coils. The KSTAR Magnet system uses two different types of CICCs-Nb/sub 3/Sn cable with Incoloy 908 conduit and NbTi cable with 316LN stainless-steel conduit. A continuous CICC jacketing system is developed for the KSTAR CICC fabrication and the jacketing system uses the tube-mill process, which consists of forming, welding, sizing and squaring procedures. The design specification of CICCs and the fabrication process is described. The welding of the Incoloy 908 strip joint is also discussed. The fabrication results including the geometrical specification and the void fraction will be discussed.
Effect of antioxidants, on deterioration by partial discharge in LDPE and XLPE [insulation materials]
The effect of antioxidants in low-density polyethylene (LDPE) and cross-linked polyethylene (XLPE) on deterioration by partial discharge (PD) was investigated. Experiments were conducted using LDPE and XLPE samples containing phenolic antioxidants. Samples subjected to the PD were analyzed using atomic force microscopy and Fourier transform infrared analysis (AFM and FTIR). AFM images demonstrated that the magnitude of pits created in the sample containing antioxidants was smaller than that in samples containing no antioxidant. FTIR showed that oxidative degradation occurred on LDPE and XLPE surfaces when they were subjected to PD. These results confirmed that the amount of oxidized substances was smaller in samples containing phenolic antioxidants than in those containing no antioxidant. This report elucidates the mechanism of antioxidant action on deterioration by PD.