Preliminary design of electrostatic sensors for MITICA beam line components

Simulation of the beamline thermal measurements to derive particle beam parameters in the ITER neutral beam test facility

Injection of high energy neutral beam particles will be used in the ITER experiment for plasma heating and current drive. In a ITER heating beam injector, a 40 MW electrostatically accelerated negative beam will be neutralised and filtered along the beamline, obtaining a nominal 16.5 MW neutral beam power to be injected in the tokamak plasma or intercepted during conditioning and commissioning. The beam will heat the actively cooled panels of the beamline components with up to 13 MW/m² surface power density and 18 MW power. These extreme conditions require testing in a ITER full scale neutral beam test facility under construction in Padova where the temperature of the beamline components will be monitored by 610 embedded thermocouples for protection against critical conditions, for recognising beam conditioning, and for deriving beam parameters. Power density maps of the expected beam-component interactions are applied on a parametric non-linear finite element model to simulate fields of expected temperatures. Such thermal maps are analyzed to derive the beam parameters during operation: divergence of 3-7 mrad and misalignment of 0-3 mrad. The sensibility of the temperature measurements is discussed considering a minimum 10% fraction of the nominal beam power.

In-vacuum sensors for the beamline components of the ITER neutral beam test facility

Embedded sensors have been designed for installation on the components of the MITICA beamline, the prototype ITER neutral beam injector (Megavolt ITER Injector and Concept Advancement), to derive characteristics of the particle beam and to monitor the component conditions during operation for protection and thermal control. Along the beamline, the components interacting with the particle beam are the neutralizer, the residual ion dump, and the calorimeter. The design and the positioning of sensors on each component have been developed considering the expected beam-surface interaction including non-ideal and off-normal conditions. The arrangement of the following instrumentation is presented: thermal sensors, strain gages, electrostatic probes including secondary emission detectors, grounding shunt for electrical currents, and accelerometers.