Operating characteristics of a new ion source for KSTAR neutral beam injection system.

A new positive ion source for the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research neutral beam injection (KSTAR NBI-1) system was designed, fabricated, and assembled in 2011. The characteristics of the arc discharge and beam extraction were investigated using hydrogen and helium gas to find the optimum operating parameters of the arc power, filament voltage, gas pressure, extracting voltage, accelerating voltage, and decelerating voltage at the neutral beam test stand at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute in 2012. Based on the optimum operating condition, the new ion source was then conditioned, and performance tests were primarily finished.

New ion source for KSTAR neutral beam injection system.

The neutral beam injection system (NBI-1) of the KSTAR tokamak can accommodate three ion sources; however, it is currently equipped with only one prototype ion source. In the 2010 and 2011 KSTAR campaigns, this ion source supplied deuterium neutral beam power of 0.7-1.

Numerical simulation for the accelerator of the KSTAR neutral beam ion source.

Recent experiments with a prototype long-pulse, high-current ion source being developed for the neutral beam injection system of the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research have shown that the accelerator grid assembly needs a further upgrade to achieve the final goal of 120keV/65A for the deuterium ion beam. The accelerator upgrade concept was determined theoretically by simulations using the IGUN code. The simulation study was focused on finding parameter sets that raise the optimum perveance as large as possible and reduce the beam divergence as low as possible.

Fabrication of an optimized hexapole magnet for a 14.5 GHz electron cyclotron resonance ion source.

A hexapole magnet for a 14.5 GHz electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) ion source, where the maximum radial field on the wall of the plasma chamber is higher than 1.1 T, has been designed and fabricated.

Long pulse beam extraction with a prototype ion source for the KSTAR neutral beam system.

Long pulse operational characteristics of the high current ion source for the KSTAR neutral beam system are described. The beam pulse length of 300 s was successfully operated at a beam power of 1.6 MW with a beam energy of 70 keV.

Study on an azimuthal line cusp ion source for the KSTAR neutral beam injector.

In this study it is found that the cusp magnetic field configuration of an anode bucket influences the primary electron behavior. An electron orbit code (ELEORBIT code) showed that an azimuthal line cusp (cusp lines run azimuthally with respect to the beam extraction direction) provides a longer primary electron confinement time than an axial line cusp configuration. Experimentally higher plasma densities were obtained under the same arc power when the azimuthal cusp chamber was used.

Calculation of extracted ion beam particle distribution including within-extractor collisions from H-alpha Doppler shift measurements.

Prototype long pulse ion sources are being developed and tested toward the goal of a deuterium beam extraction of 120 keV/65 A. The latest prototype source consists of a magnetic bucket plasma generator and a four-grid copper accelerator system with multicircular apertures of 568 holes. To measure the angular divergence and the ion species of the ion beam, an optical multichannel analyzer (OMA) system for a Doppler-shifted H-alpha lights was set up at the end of a gas-cell neutralizer.