Galvano-T and Nuclear Fusion

Galvanoforming benefits regarding fusion in a nutshell.

France

The Tore Supra is located on the grounds of CEA (Commissariat à l’énergie atomique
et aux énergies alternatives) in the provence (Caderache) accomplished many fundamentals for ITER (which is being build in direct neighborhood) und the Wendelstein W7X that are or will be equipped with superconducting inductors.

With 30 cubicmeters plasma volume Tore Supra is also one of the larger reactors.

We created NBI grids source-walls for two experiments for Tore Supra (among other things for MANTIS).

Great Britain

JET is the worldwide largest researching fusion reactor and it is active since 1983.

JET is a machine with a plasma volume of 100 cubicmeters and total power of 38 MW (23 MW Neutral Beam Injection (NBI) from 16 sources and 15 MW electron-zyklotron-resonance-heating (ECRH)) which was abtle to produce a fusion performance of 16 MW in 1996 unter deuterium/tritium conditions.

Although the utilised heating performance was higher (P in/P out = 0,7) it brang out the perspectives of the back plannned reactor ITER (International Thermonuclear Experiment Reactor). Especially because of the long uptime under D/T conditions JET is very important for ITER’s experiments because long-time performance of materials manifest themselves in such a reactor.

Since GT was founded we crafted several pieces for JET. Those pieces were above all 200 grid-halves for JET’s NBI heater with 16 Incetors, some neutralizers (NBI), several HE 11 waveguides for the ECRH heater, a few dagnostic antennas and also pieces for the pellet injector. Because the uptime was originall set for not more than 15 year nowadays (after 20 years uptime) some of the pieces have to be replaced again.

MAST this institute was built for the purpose of researching the possibilities of a Tokamak reactor. Experiments there are supposed to enable a better understanding of Tokamak reactors with relation to ITER.

Galvano-T had the honor to caft grids for MAST’s NBI heaters.

India

The SST1 is located at the Institute for Plasma Research (IPR) in the city of Bhat (Gandhinagar district).

GT crafted several grid sets in IPP Garching design for SST1. PVA Tepla AG who crafted the P.I.N.I.’s was subcontractor for this project.

Germany

In Max Planck Institute for Plasma physics in Garching germany’s biggest Tokamak reactor can be found.

The reactor has a plasma volume of 14 cubicmeters and is therefore obviously smaller than JET. Despite that this Tokamak is able to show a remarkable heating performance of 27 MW (20 MW of the performance come from the NBI with its 8 sources).

GT produced the grid sets for ASDEX’ 8 sources as well as pieces for several experiments of NBI (e.g. BATMAN, MANITU, RADI and – hopefully soon – ELISE), actively cooled Faraday screens for HF sources (the currently favourised Ion source of ITER), waveguides and HF mirrors for the ECRH heater.

TEXTOR in the research centre Jülich (the former KFA) the Tokamak Textor is located which is on duty since 1982. With its plasma volume of 7 cubicmeters and a smaller heating performance Textor is far smaller than ASDEX uprade and subject of several experiments of plasma reasearch and the interaction of Plasma and Torus wall (first wall).

For TEXTOR GT produced the grids of its NBI (those were identically constructed with those of the IPP and therefore collectively developed by IPP and FZJ (KFA) (IPP NI + KFA ZBB)). We also tried out other production processes and later on we repaired several pieces of Duct and its sources.

As WENDELSTEIN 7 AS’s successor the Stellerator W7X is being built in Garching that is located in Greifswald near the Baltic Sea between Rügen and Usedom. Greifswald is one of IPP Garching’s outposts. W7x is designed to have a plasma volume of 30cubic meters and a heating performance of more than 20 MW (aproximately 10 MW form 10 Gyrotrons (140 GHz) and the ECRH heater and also 10 MW from the NBI heaters with 4 sources).

We crafted the grids (which are identically constructed with those of the ASDEX upgrade), galvanized the jet tubes and also produced HF mirrors for the ECRH heater for W7X. (The mirrors were planned, construced and crafted in collaboration of IPP Garching with IPF Stuttgard and Research Centre Karlsruhe. In the end it were aournd 150 mirrors and the tpe M3 had a cooling surface of 1 m².) In addition we galvanized the inner core structures and a lot of noble metal pipes.