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In arc discharge plasma, ion species ratio depends on plasma density and ion confinement time. To increase an atomic ion species ratio in an NBI (neutral beam injector) ion source, various ion sources have been designed with a higher ratio of plasma volume to effective ion loss area for increasing ion confinement time. In such designs, most NBI ion sources have a large arc chamber with strong cusp magnetic field. KSTAR NBI ion source also has a large arc chamber with a strong azimuthal line cusp configuration but its atomic ion (H+) beam fraction is small because its normal operation power levels of the arc discharges are comparatively lower than those of other NBI ion sources. In particular, the H2+ ion beam fraction is relatively large at about 40%. This means that there are many primary electrons in the beam extraction region. Through several Ele-orbit code simulations, it was found that some magnetic cusp configurations are effective in preventing primary electrons from nearing the plasma grid facing a plasma and having a high voltage potential. To reduce the molecular ion fraction in KSTAR NBI ion source and consequently increase its atomic ion fraction, experiments regarding the application of several new magnetic cusp configurations to the arc chamber were performed. Experimental results show that the new magnetic cusp configuration can increase the atomic ion fraction to approximately 80%, despite the low arc operation power at KSTAR NBI ion source.

KAERI is presently developing a rectangular RF driven deuterium ion source for both neutron source and fusion applications. For a model-based design of a reliable impedance matching network for the ion source, we extend an equivalent circuit model of the ion source system by allowing effects of an isolation transformer and a Faraday shield on the system to be reflected in our previous model (Huh et al., 2017 Fusion Eng. Des. 121 337). In this paper we use the model to investigate the trends in external electrical characteristics of the ion source system (e.g., voltage and current across and through an RF antenna coil and the impedance matching network circuit components) with RF power of up to 50 kW. The model results provide criteria for the impedance matching network design and data for an assessment of the ion source performance.

A neutral beam (NB) ion source aimed to inject a 0.5-MW NB has been developed for Versatile Experiment Spherical Torus (VEST) plasma heating. Beam energy is generally limited to less than ∼20 keV to reduce particle orbit loss and beam shine-through. To meet this power demand, high-current ion beam extraction is important to achieve the required performance of the ion source. In this study, a 0.7-MW ion source was designed, fabricated, assembled, and optimized at the NB test stand in Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) considering the beam power losses in the beamline components. The ion source comprises a multicusped-bucket-type plasma generator and a multislot-triode-type ion accelerator with an extraction area of 12 cm × 46 cm. The characteristics of arc discharge and beam extraction were investigated using hydrogen gas to obtain the optimum operating parameters of the arc power, filament voltage, gas pressure, extraction voltage, and suppression voltage. The ion source was then conditioned and performance tests were primarily completed. Results of the experiments show that the ion source can extract sufficient ion beam power that is than 0.75 MW (50 A/15 keV) with 100-kW arc power. The arc efficiency and beam perveance were estimated to be 0.6 A/kW and 20–25 μP, respectively. Moreover, the design goal of delivering a 0.5-MW NB into the VEST plasma will be achievable based on the optimum operating conditions. This ion source has been installed in the VEST NB injection system at Seoul National University and its commissioning is ongoing.

A short-pulse and high power supply system is developed for the pulse arc ion source of the neutral beam injector (NBI) of the Versatile Experiment Spherical Torus (VEST). The NBI system, with the maximum ion beam power of 20 keV, 0.8 MW and pulse length of 10 ms, was designed for the auxiliary plasma heating and current drive source. However, the beam injection energy needs to be lower than 20 keV under the initial target plasma parameters of VEST due to the beam-plasma coupling efficiency. For this reason, modulation of the beam energy in pulse duration is important to increase efficiency of the VEST NBI system. To satisfy these requirements, a pulse power system based on Marx generator is developed by utilizing high-energy capacitors and a solid-state switching system for the ion beam extraction and arc power supply. In addition, a battery-based power supply system is developed for the filament heating power supply which is highly cost-effective. In this paper, circuit structure and features of the power supply system of the ion source for the VEST NBI is described and the results of the discharges test are presented.

Within the framework for the development of a radio frequency driven positive ion source for fusion applications, KAERI is currently constructing a new high power large area radio frequency ion source. An impedance matching circuit maximizing the power transfer to a plasma in the ion source, while taking into account the technical feasibility, is preliminarily designed at a conceptual level. In order to estimate the plasma load impedance and design parameters, an integrated model composed of the hydrogen plasma global model, the two-dimensional electromagnetic model, the relative plasma dielectric constant calculation module, and the impedance matching circuit module is developed for the ion source with a rectangular tube geometry. By employing this design model, the design parameters dependent on RF input powers of up to 50 kW are investigated and the preliminary design is assessed.

This study evaluated the effectiveness of antioxidant (AO) on retarding aging of asphalt mixture using the large molecular size (LMS) of gel-permeation chromatogram (GPC) technique. A polymer stabilizer (designated as KL) and a hydrated lime (HL) were used for preparing dense-graded asphalt (DGA) mixes to examine the effect of the AOs on age retardation. The asphalt mixtures prepared with and without AO were aged artificially in two stages; the short-term aging (SA) for one hour at 160 °C and the long-term aging (LA) for one week at 76 °C. The LMS values were used in the statistical test for estimation of age retardation effect of the AOs and for predicting absolute viscosity. It was found that the KL and HL were effective for inducing reduction of aging significantly at α = 0.05 after SA and LA. Therefore, it was found that the LMS, which was obtained by GPC test, was a dependable variable that can be used for evaluation of age retardation. It was also observed that the KL and HL did apparently have an effect of reducing the AV, predicted by LMS, after SA and LA.

A 10 m s-pulsed NBI (Neutral Beam Injection) system for VEST (Versatile Experiment Spherical Torus) plasma heating is designed to provide a beam power of more than 0.6 MW with 20 keV H° neutrals. The VEST NBI injector is composed of 2 sets of 20 keV/25A magnetic cusp type bucket ion source, neutralizer ducts, residual ion dump, NB vessel with a cryopump, and rotating calorimeter. The position and size of these beamline components are roughly determined with geometric calculation of beam power transmission: the overall length of beamline is 1.8 m, spacing between ground grid and neutralizer of 1.0 m, and position of residual ion dump is 0.8 m downstream from the neutralizer exit. Optimizing the gas feed between ion source and neutralizer can leads to a neutralization efficiency of ∼76%. Finally, the beam power of maximum 0.6 MW can be delivered to the VEST plasma with a beam loss of 10%.

An efficient heating and current drive scheme in central or off-axis region is required to realize steady state operation of tokamak fusion reactor. And the fast wave in lower hybrid resonance range of frequency could be a candidate for such an efficient scheme in high density and high temperature plasmas. Its propagation and absorption characteristics including current drive and coupling efficiency are analyzed for Versatile Experiment Spherical Torus and it is shown that it is possible to drive current with considerable current drive efficiency in central region. The RF system for the fast wave experiment including klystron, transmission systems, inter-digital antenna, and RF diagnostics are given as well in this paper.

A small-scale test stand of a negative NBI source composed of a prototype negative ion source, an RF generator, and an HV power supply for negative ion beam extraction has been established. The magnetic filter and a beam extraction grid system with electron deflection magnets were designed for the prototype negative ion source. The BL value of the magnetic filter is 1.6 mTm and almost all electrons are deflected onto the surface of the extraction grid. The first negative ion beam extraction experiments have been carried out. When the extraction voltage is 5.6 kV, the negative ion current density is 0.6 mA/cm2 at 5 kW RF power. The e/H− ratio is about 2–3 and it decreased below 1 when the electrical potential of the plasma bucket is grounded.

A large-scale hydrogen arc plasma source was developed at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute for a high power pulsed NBI system of VEST which is a compact spherical tokamak at Seoul national university. One of the research target of VEST is to study innovative tokamak operating scenarios. For this purpose, high current density and uniform large-scale pulse plasma source is required to satisfy the target ion beam power efficiently. Therefore, optimizing the plasma parameters of the ion source such as the electron density, temperature, and plasma uniformity is conducted by changing the operating conditions of the plasma source. Furthermore, ion species of the hydrogen plasma source are analyzed using a particle balance model to increase the monatomic fraction which is another essential parameter for increasing the ion beam current density. Conclusively, efficient operating conditions are presented from the results of the optimized plasma parameters and the extractable ion beam current is calculated.

The long-pulse acceleration of the high-power positive ion beam has been demonstrated with the JT-60 positive ion source in the joint experiment among Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) and National Fusion Research Institute (NFRI) under the collaboration program for the development of plasma heating and current drive systems. In this joint experiment, the increase of the heat load and the breakdowns induced by the degradation of the beam optics due to the gas accumulation was one of the critical issues for the long-pulse acceleration. As a result of development of the long-pulse operation techniques of the ion source and facilities of the neutral beam test stand in KAERI, 2 MW 100 s beam has been achieved for the first time. The achieved beam performance satisfies the JT-60SA requirement which is designed to be a 1.94 MW ion beam power from an ion source corresponding to total neutral beam power of 20 MW with 24 ion sources. Therefore, it was found that the JT-60 positive ion sources were applicable in the JT-60SA neutral beam injectors. Moreover, because this ion source is planned to be a backup ion source for KSTAR, the operational region and characteristic has been clarified to apply to the KSTAR neutral beam injector.

The neutral beam injection (NBI) system was designed to provide plasma heating and current drive for high performance and long pulse operation of the Korean Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) device using two co-current beam injection systems. Each neutral beam injection system was designed to inject three beams using three ion sources and each ion source has been designed to deliver more than 2.0 MW of deuterium neutral beam power for the 100-keV beam energy. Consequently, the final goal of the KSTAR NBI system aims to inject more than 12 MW of deuterium beam power with the two NBI for the long pulse operation of the KSTAR. As an initial step toward the long pulse (∼300 s) KSTAR NBI system development, the first neutral beam injection system equipped with one ion source was constructed for the KSTAR 2010 campaign and successfully commissioned. During the KSTAR 2010 campaign, a MW-deuterium neutral beam was successfully injected to the KSTAR plasma with maximum beam energy of 90 keV and the L-H transition was observed with neutral beam heating. In recent 2011 campaign, the beam power of 1.5 MW is injected with the beam energy of 95 keV. With the beam injection, the ion and electron temperatures increased significantly, and increase of the toroidal rotation speed of the plasma was observed as well. This paper describes the design, construction, commissioning results of the first NBI system leading the successful heating experiments carried in the KSTAR 2010 and 2011 campaign and the trial of 300-s long pulse beam extraction.

The first neutral beam injector (NBI-1) has been developed for the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) tokamak. The first long pulse ion source (LPIS-1) has been installed in the NBI-1 for an auxiliary heating and current drive of KSTAR plasmas. The performance of 300 s ion beam extraction in the LPIS-1 was investigated on the KSTAR NBI-1 system, prior to the neutral beam injection for long pulse operation. The ion source consists of a magnetic bucket plasma generator with multi-pole cusp fields and a set of prototype tetrode accelerators with circular-type apertures. The inner volume of the plasma generator and accelerator column in the LPIS-1 is approximately 123 L. The nominal operation requirements for the ion source (IS) were a 100 kV/50 A deuterium beam and a 300 s pulse length. The extraction of ion beams was initiated by the formation of arc plasmas in the LPIS-1, called an arc-beam extraction method. A stable ion beam extraction of the LPIS-1 was achieved with 80 kV/27 A and a beam perveance of 1.19 microperv for a 300 s pulse length. Beam power deposition along the NBI-1 has been measured using water-flow calorimetry (WFC), and the sum of the deposited power on the ion source and beamline components was about 93% of the drained acceleration power (V acc •I acc ). The beam power deposition was compared to the calculated results of the beam transport with re-ionization (BTR) code.

A prototype Long Pulse Ion Source (LPIS) was developed for the Neutral Beam Injection (NBI) system of the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) project. Beam extraction experiments of the ion source were carried out at the Neutral Beam Test Stand (NBTS) at KAERI. The second gap (the distance between the G2 grid and the G3 grid) of the accelerator was shortened from 9.0 mm to 7.0 mm and 6.0 mm as part of an effort to increase the ion beam current with low beam divergence. The performance improvement and the limitations of the LPIS with its shortened second gap are experimentally presented and discussed regarding the study of the beam characteristics. From these efforts to find the optimum beam parameters, design directions for the next accelerator are presented.

The neutral beam injection (NBI-1) system has been designed for providing a 300 s deuterium beam of 120 kV/65 A as an auxiliary heating and current drive system of the KSTAR (Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research) tokamak. The deuterium beam is produced from a long pulse ion source composed of a bucket-type plasma generator and a multi-aperture tetrode accelerator with the help of discharge power supplies and high voltage (HV) power supplies. The beamline components (BLCs) include a neutralizer with an optical multi-channel analyzer (OMA) section, a bending magnet (BM), an ion dump assembly, a movable calorimeter, beam scrapers, and a cryo-sorption pump system in a rectangular vacuum tank. A beam duct equipped with bellows and a voltage break is placed between the NBI vacuum tank and the KSTAR vacuum vessel. All data and parameters of the NBI system are controlled by a control and data acquisition (CODAQ) system through the EPICS based Ethernet interface.

A general neutralizer experiment was carried out to establish the operational coil current of the bending magnet, the neutralization efficiency of an ion beam with various parameter (beam energy, gas flow rate). Suggested operational coil current which was already studied for the bending magnet, was confirmed through a thermocouple installed at the middle of each ion dump and WFC (water flow calorimetry) system. The calculated optimum coil currents agree with the experimental coil current to penetrate each ion dump. Neutralization efficiency was measured by the WFC system. It depends on the gas flow rate and beam energy and a gas injection more than 800 sccm was needed to attain a equilibrium neutralization. Maximum efficiency was measured at more than 60% at 40 keV and less than 30% at the 80 keV of the hydrogen beam.

The radial profiles of KT-1 tokamak (major radius of 27 cm, minor radius of 4.25 cm, two poloidal stainless-steel limiters) edge plasma parameters are measured using single and triple electric probes. The particle transport parameters are calculated from the measured edge plasma parameters, and the results are analyzed by the simple fluid approximations. The cross-field particle diffusion coefficient ( D ⊥ ) in the boundary plasma of the KT-1 is calculated from the density scrape-off length ( λ n ) measured by using a triple probe. The particle density and electron temperature fall exponentially in the radial direction with the e-folding length of λ n =0.13 cm and λ e =0.41 cm, respectively. From the scrape-off layer (SOL) model, the experimental values of scrape-off length ( λ n ) is used to calculate the cross-field diffusion coefficient ( D ⊥ =1.2×10 3 cm 2 /s), roughly corresponding to one third of the typical Bohm value. A simple SOL model with the contribution of recombination is introduced to evaluate the Bohm diffusion in the KT-1 tokamak edge plasma. Cross-field heat conductivity calculated from these deduced values is ∼5.2 D ⊥ in the SOL of KT-1 edge plasma. These results provide the finally certain information for edge particle transport in the KT-1 boundary plasmas.