Conceptual design of NBI beamline for VEST plasma heating

- VEST NBI injector is conceptually designed to support further VEST plasma experiment.
- VEST NBI injector composed of 2 sets of 20 keV/25A magnetic cusp type bucket ion source, neutralizer ducts, electrostatic ion dumps, NB vessel with cryopump, and rotating calorimerter.
- The vacuum vessel of the beamline is divided into two parts for high injection efficiency and different direction (co- and counter-current) of neutral beam injection.
- An ion source for the VEST NBI system was also designed to deliver neutral hydrogen beams with a power of 0.3 MW. The plasma generator of the VEST NB ion source has modified TFTR bucket multi-cusp chamber. The plasma generator has twelve hair-pin shaped tungsten filaments used as a cathode and an arc chamber including a bucket and an electron dump which serve as anode. The accelerator system consists of three grids, each having extraction area of 100 mm × 320 mm and 64 shaped slits of 3 mm spacing.
- The preliminary structure design and the layout of the main components of the injector have been completed. Simulation and calculation for optimization of the NB beamline design results prove that the parameters of ion source, neutralization efficiency (76%:95% equilibrium neutralization efficiency), and beam power transmission efficiency (higher than 90%) are in agreement with design targets of the VEST NB beamline.
- This VEST NBI system will provide a neutral beam of ∼0.6 MW for both heating and current drive in torus plasma.

A 10 m s-pulsed NBI (Neutral Beam Injection) system for VEST (Versatile Experiment Spherical Torus) plasma heating is designed to provide a beam power of more than 0.6 MW with 20 keV H° neutrals. The VEST NBI injector is composed of 2 sets of 20 keV/25A magnetic cusp type bucket ion source, neutralizer ducts, residual ion dump, NB vessel with a cryopump, and rotating calorimeter. The position and size of these beamline components are roughly determined with geometric calculation of beam power transmission: the overall length of beamline is 1.8 m, spacing between ground grid and neutralizer of 1.0 m, and position of residual ion dump is 0.8 m downstream from the neutralizer exit. Optimizing the gas feed between ion source and neutralizer can leads to a neutralization efficiency of ∼76%. Finally, the beam power of maximum 0.6 MW can be delivered to the VEST plasma with a beam loss of 10%.