HTS Current Leads Procurement Arrangement signed

A prototype HTS current lead from the W7-X project. On the left-hand side of the prototype is the warm electrical contact connecting to the power supplies, to the right, the cold electrical contact which connects to the 18 Toroidal Field coils, the four modules of the Central Solenoid, and the six Equilibrium Field coils. The black middle section is the flange used to fix the current lead.

Today, F4E Director Didier Gambier signed the Procurement Arrangement (PA) between F4E and the Japanese Atomic Energy Agency regarding Europe’s contribution of High Temperature Superconducting (HTS) current leads to the JT-60SA project. The JT-60SA project is one of the three projects which are jointly being implemented within the Broader Approach Agreement. This PA defines the terms of delivery of the “in-kind” contribution as 26 HTS current leads which will be designed, constructed and tested by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Delivery of the first current leads to Japan is foreseen for 2014.

The HTS current leads are the vital electrical links between the power supplies and the 18 Toroidal Field coils (in three groups of six), the four modules of the Central Solenoid, and the six Equilibrium Field coils of the JT-60SA tokamak. The HTS current leads allow a significant reduction of the refrigeration requirements.

The HTS current leads for JT-60SA are based on KIT’s development of similar current leads for the Wendelstein 7X project at the Max Planck Institut für Plasmaphysik in Greifswald, Germany.

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