Preliminary Design of the Cesium Oven for the ITER Neutral Beam Injector

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Abstract
The ITER experiment, currently under construction in Cadarache in southern France, will require the injection of a considerable amount of additional power from its heating and current drive (HCD) systems in order to sustain long plasma pulses. Among all of the various systems, neutral beam injectors (NBIs) will account for 50 MW of power over three devices, mediated by fast neutrals at 1 MeV in deuterium (or 870 keV in hydrogen). The required extracted negative ion current at the plasma source (PS) can only be reached through efficient negative ion generation and extraction, which in this type of NBIs is achieved by sufficient surface coating of the inner surfaces of the PS with a low work-function metal, such as cesium. This article describes the cesium oven for the ITER Heating NBI (HNBI), which is a device for the controlled evaporation of cesium inside the PS: its general structure is based on the design of the cesium oven for the Source for Production of Ion of Deuterium Extracted from Rf plasma (SPIDER) experiment, however with the necessary modifications to make it compatible with the more stringent ITER guidelines, such as radiation resistance and remote handling compatibility. A prototype has been designed at Consorzio RFX by taking into account this set of requirements, followed by extensive simulation of the thermal distribution.
Funding Information
  • EUROfusion Consortium
  • European Union via the Euratom Research and Training Program (101052200)

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