Neutral Beam Power Supplies Procurement Arrangement – signed and sealed

The Procurement Arrangement (PA) regarding the European contribution to ITER Neutral Beam Power Supplies, has been signed on 10 July by Fusion for Energy Director, Didier Gambier. This is an agreement between the ITER organisation and F4E which authorises work for the developing and manufacturing of ITER, details the necessary technical requirements and facilitates the measurement of the in-kind contribution.

The PA concerns the procurement of power supplies for two neutral beam injectors for the ITER machine. Neutral beam heating from these injectors brings highly energetic particles to the tokamak in order to assist in heating the plasma up to the 100 millions degrees C necessary for fusion to occur.

This PA is based on functional specifications, meaning that the required performances are specified in detail but that the supplier has freedom of choice of design solutions, manufacturing practices and bears the full responsibility for the fulfillment of the specified performances. It is the first PA to be signed within the Heating & Current Drive, Diagnostics, Plasma Engineering and CODAC Division at F4E.

Procurements associated with this PA were presented at the information day about ITER’s Heating and Current Drive Power Supplies, held in the F4E offices earlier this year.

The procurement of the neutral beam power supplies for ITER is shared with the Japanese Domestic Agency. While the Japanese scope covers the largest part of the high-voltage components of the equipment, the European scope comprises mostly power conversion systems.