29th Symposium on Fusion Technology (SOFT 2016)

P1.137 Qualification, manufacturing and assembly of the WEST divertor structure and coils

5 Sep 2016, 14:20

1h 40m

Foyer 2A (2nd floor), 3A (3rd floor) (Prague Congress Centre)

Board: 137

Poster G. Vessel/In-Vessel Engineering and Remote Handling P1 Poster session

Speaker

Louis Doceul (CEA Cadarache)

Description

In order to fully validate ‘’ITER-like’’ actively water cooled tungsten plasma facing units, addressing the issues of long plasma discharges, an axisymmetric divertor structure has been studied and manufactured for the implementation in the WEST (Tungsten (W) Environment in Steady state Tokamak) tokamak platform. This assembly, called divertor structure and coils (4m diameter, 20 tonnes), is composed of two stainless steel casings containing an actively water cooled (up to 180°C, 4MPa) copper winding pack designed for a current in the range of 12.5kA (up to 1000s). It must sustain harsh environmental conditions in terms of ultra-high vacuum, high temperatures and electrodynamic loads. One major difficulty is the induction brazing assembly of individual bended conductor portion inside the vacuum vessel and the consecutive sealing of the casings by TIG welding. Therefor development activities have been carried out on a scale one dummy coil, such as brazing, assembly, thermal cycling and electrical insulation tests (5kV ground voltage). Whereas the brazing assembly technics and the conductor installation were validated without major difficulties, different technical solutions for the electrical insulation had to be tested. The chosen solution is a resin epoxy impregnated fiber glass fabric layered around the conductors followed by a polymerization procedure. In parallel the manufacturing of divertor structure components started in the second half of 2013 with a total delivery at the end of 2015. The paper will illustrate the technical developments which have been performed in order to fully validate the design. It concerns mainly the dummy coil and the complex conductor installation procedure assisted by virtual reality tools. The manufacturing methods proposed by the contractor in order to fulfil the technical requirements will be also addressed. Finally the processes and associated tools used in order to implement this large component inside the WEST vacuum vessel will be detailed.