Search

The effective control of magnetohydrodynamic instabilities in fusion experiments by means of actively controlled coils calls for challenging dynamic requirements to the relevant power supply (PS) systems. The first part of this paper gives an overview on typical requirements and technological solutions adopted in some present fusion experiments. Then, the advantages of SiC devices with respect to the Si ones are described in this paper, including lower switching losses, higher switching speed, higher operating junction temperature, and higher voltage capability. As an application example, this paper reports on the case of the PS system for resistive wall mode control in the JT-60SA satellite tokamak, where analyses showed the difficulty of satisfying the demanding requirements in terms of high current bandwidth (3 kHz) and short latency ( <50~\mu \texts ) with a simple H-bridge topology adopting standard IGBT. On the contrary, the use of Si–SiC IGBT with the same topology can allow meeting the specifications, as demonstrated by the development and test of such a power amplifier, rated for $300~A_{{\mathrm{pk}}}$ and 240 V. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

JT-60SA, the superconducting tokamak under construction in Japan, will be equipped with a mix of new and reused Power Supply Systems. Most of the new Power Supply Systems are procured by European Voluntary Contributors under the framework of Broader Approach agreement between Europe and Japan. For the toroidal circuit, the 25.7 kA steady state ac/dc converter is procured by CEA. For the poloidal circuits, the procurement of 10 ac/dc converters, almost all rated ±20 kA and about ±1 kV is shared between CEA and ENEA. The two in-vessel coils for fast control of plasma position are supplied with two independent thyristor converters procured by ENEA, each one rated ±5 kA and ±1 kV. The operation of four Switching Network Units procured by ENEA inserts settable resistors in series to each Central Solenoid module, producing up to 5 kV at the nominal current of 20 kA and allowing stable plasma initiation. The protection of toroidal and poloidal superconducting magnets is assured by thirteen Quench Protection Circuits procured by Consorzio RFX, rated ±20 kA and ±3.8 kV for poloidal coils and 25.7 kA and 2.8 kV for toroidal ones, inserting a discharge resistor in the related circuit for fast dissipation of the magnetic energy stored in the coil. Finally, the suppression of Resistive Wall Modes is actively performed by 18 in-vessel coils, independently supplied by a corresponding number of fast inverters procured by Consorzio RFX, each one rated for 300 A and 240 V. The key aspects of the design of the aforementioned Power Supply Systems are described in the paper, informing also about the present status of the procurement: their design was completed and some systems were already manufactured, tested and delivered to Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The recent start-up improvements brought to RFX-mod have allowed increasing the plasma current in the range 1.7–1.9MA, but still they proved to be not sufficient to routinely and reliably reach higher values of plasma current that would be very useful for the present studies on enhanced confinement. The need for higher poloidal flux variation together with the overabundant available toroidal flux has led to the study of a rearrangement of the power supply system with the aim of increasing the first at the expenses of the latter. Thanks to the flexibility of the power supply system, composed of modular thyristor converters, the rearrangement has been easily obtained and the resulting enhanced poloidal flux capability scenario described in the paper allows a two step plasma current ramp-up. In order to increase as much as possible the plasma current up to the nominal value of 2MA it is necessary to fully exploit the thyristor converter power capability, in particular in the first ramp-up phase. In the paper a detailed verification of their maximum performance is presented. The first results obtained after power supply reconfiguration are very good, with plasma current kept constant at about 2MA for 100ms. The enabled operation at very high plasma current requires also an optimization of the magneto hydro dynamics (MHD) mode coil power supplies that are required to provide higher current values. Therefore a dedicated study of their control system has been worked out, which allowed understanding how to increase as much as possible the output current without losing the dynamic performance, so keeping the efficiency in the control of dominant and secondary modes, which is essential to obtain good and reproducible discharges. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The mission of JT-60SA, the satellite Tokamak under construction in Naka (Japan), includes the attainment of steady-state high-beta plasmas. For this purpose, an active control system based on 18 in-vessel sector coils (SC) is foreseen to suppress the resistive wall modes (RWM). Each coil will be independently fed by a dedicated converter, rated for 300 A and 240 V, which has to produce the required current/voltage following in real time the reference provided by the JT-60SA MHD Controller. To minimize the current rating, these converters shall be sufficiently fast to avoid an excessive growth of the RWM. This requires a very high dynamic performance, largely beyond that of standard industrial applications. This paper firstly reports the latest results of the studies on the requirements of the RWM active control system. Then, the reference design of the power supply system is presented, including the ac/dc conversion stage, the fast converters and the control section. The advantages of the proposed scheme are discussed and the main electrical parameters are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supervisory control system for superconducting magnet power supplies in JT-60SA is designed and developed. This system is in charge of many kinds of control; discharge sequence control, real-time magnet current control, data acquisition, machine protection and human safety. In the design, communication interface has to be optimized according to all requirements. The most important feature is real-time control with 4 kHz which is required for equilibrium control of plasma. In order to satisfy this requirement, reflective memory (RFM) network is applied for high speed data sharing with multiple controllers. This paper describes the architecture of the control system and the operation of the power supply system under the supervision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]