AAAS – ITER Dodges Trouble With Superconducting Cables
American Association for the Advancement of Science – ITER Dodges Trouble With Superconducting Cables
By Daniel Clery | 27 February 2012 – 3:22 PM
A potential stumbling block that threatened to delay construction of the huge ITER fusion reactor—an international project based at Cadarache in France—looks like it has been resolved. Tests last year on samples of superconductor cable for the facility’s magnets indicated the cable would last only one-tenth as long as required. That prompted a scramble to find out what the problem was and identify a new cable configuration that would work. Recent tests at a high-magnetic-field facility in Switzerland showed that engineers had succeeded. “This demonstrates clearly that there is a solution that works,” says Neil Mitchell, head of ITER’s magnet division.
Keeping the 150 million°C plasma at the heart of the machine in place requires huge and powerful electromagnets made of superconducting cables. The cables that failed last year were made of niobium tin and were destined for the central solenoid—a coil at the very center of the machine that acts to create a current of plasma around the doughnut shaped reactor. The solenoid will require nearly 36 kilometers of superconducting cable and, once complete, will weigh nearly 1000 tonnes.
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