Acceleration of MeV-class energy, high-current-density H-ion beams for ITER neutral beam system

Taniguchi, Masaki; Inoue, Takashi; Kashiwagi, Mieko; Watanabe, Kazuhiro; Hanada, Masaya; Seki, Takayoshi*; Dairaku, Masayuki; Sakamoto, Keishi

In the ITER NB systems, conventional gas insulation technology cannot be utilized because of the conductivity of the insulation gas caused by the radiation from the tokamak plasma. To overcome this problem, a vacuum insulated beam source (VIBS), where the whole beam source is immersed in vacuum, has been developed in JAERI. Recently, voltage holding capability of the VIBS was drastically improved by installing the large stress ring and these progress enables us to perform the high power operation of the VIBS accelerator. For high current density H- beam acceleration, modifications were made on KAMABOKO source. At present, H- beam current density is 146 A/m at 836 keV (input arc power; 40 kW, operation pressure; 0.3 Pa).The acceleration of 900 keV, 0.1 A level beam was accomplished for 175 shots during the test campaign. The beam acceleration was quite stable and the degradation of the voltage holding due to the beam acceleration and/or Cs seeding was not observed.