Improvement of voltage holding capability in the 500 keV negative ion source for JT-60SA

Tanaka, Yutaka; Hanada, Masaya; Kojima, Atsushi; Akino, Noboru; Shimizu, Tatsuo; Oshima, Katsumi; Inoue, Takashi; Watanabe, Kazuhiro; Taniguchi, Masaki; Kashiwagi, Mieko; Umeda, Naotaka; Tobari, Hiroyuki; Grisham, L. R.*; JT-60NBI Group

The JT-60U negative ion source is required to produce 44 A of 500 keV D ion beams for the JT-60SA. So far, acceleration voltage of 450 kV was achieved without beam acceleration and 416 kV with beam acceleration. These are lower than the rated voltage for JT-60SA due to vacuum breakdowns. To examine the cause of vacuum breakdown, the complicated structure of the accelerator was modeled for the calculation of electric field inside the accelerator. At the corners of the grid support flanges, the electric fields are locally concentrated to be 5.2-5.5 kV/mm. This is higher than other parts of the accelerator where the averaged field is around 3 kV/mm. To reduce the concentrated electric field, the support structures were modified to extend the gap lengths between grids. By repeating the high-voltage application of 3 s pulses, the applied voltage was increased. After 15 hours of conditioning, the accelerator sustained its rated value of 500 kV without beam acceleration.