Implications of the Tore-Supra WEST-Project on Radio-Frequency Additionnal Heating Systems

This year Tore-Supra celebrated its 25 years of operation. During this long time, a number of technologies have been developed. First of all, it was mandatory to develop reliable superconducting magnets at ∼1.8 K, with superfluid helium as an efficient coolant. For the production of steady state discharge, three types of radio frequency (RF) additional heating systems have been developed: 1) lower hybrid current drive; 2) ion cyclotron resonance heating; and 3) electron cyclotron resonance heating. To cope with long lasting discharges (up to 380 s × 2.8 MW) and large RF additional heating power (12.3 MW × 3 s), actively cooled (AC) plasma facing components were deployed in Tore-Supra for the first time in a tokamak environment. Tore-Supra is now being modified into a D-shape axisymmetric tokamak with AC tungsten main chamber walls and a divertor, the WEST project (W-for tungsten-environment in steady-state tokamak). This new facility has the objective to offer ITER a test bed for validating the relevant AC metallic technologies in D-shape H-mode plasmas. In contrast to other metallic devices, such as JET and ASDEX Upgrade, WEST will rely only on the RF additional power systems. A set of plasma scenarios have been identified, ranging from a high total RF power scenario up to 15 MW in 30 s, to a high fluence scenario of 1000 s with up to 10 MW of injected RF power. These scenarios are able to reproduce ITER relevant conditions of steady state heat loads of 10-20 MW/m2, to test tungsten AC divertor technologies with relevant power heat fluxes and particle fluence. © 1973-2012 IEEE.