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The ITER Organization (10) and the Institute of Plasma Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP) are jointly developing the 68 kA current leads using High Temperature Superconductors for the superconducting Toroidal Field (TF) magnet system of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, ITER. The proposed design consists of a conventional helium cooled heat exchanger operating between 65 K and 320 K and an HTS module covering the low temperature end using Bi-2223 tapes. The first HTS current lead prototypes will be tested in the EAST tokamak facility at ASIPP. This paper discusses the design of the first, 68 kA, TF HTS lead, which is the main emphasis of this first stage of the ITER current lead development program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the superconducting magnet system of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, ITER, 60 current leads for a total current of more than 2500 kA are needed. To reduce the resultant large refrigerator load at 4.5 K, High Temperature Superconductor current leads (HTS-CL) could be used. Therefore, EFDA CSU Garching had launched a development program for a 70 kA HTS-CL demonstrator. The Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe and CRPP developed and built this CL optimized for 50 K Helium operation. In 2004, the CL was successfully tested in the TOSKA facility at the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe. The very encouraging results lead to testing this CL with 80 K Helium because ITER provides a large 80 K Helium cooling capacity for the thermal shields. At the end of last year, the test could be successfully performed demonstrating that high current capacity current leads can be stably operated at about 80–85 K. Recently, the CL was retested using liquid nitrogen which would be an interesting alternative option. In this paper, the test results for the 80 K He cooling operation as well as for the operation with LN2 are presented and compared to the results obtained before for nominal conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]