ITER – Lighting the fire in Padua
ITER Newsline – Lighting the fire in Padua
By Paul Thomas | 02 March 2012
A ceremony was held in Padua, Italy on Monday 27 February for the launching of the PRIMA Neutral Beam Test Facility (NBTF).
In order to heat fuel to the 200-300 million °C temperature range required for fusion, ITER will be equipped with three powerful heating systems: 33MW of neutral beams; 20MW of electron cyclotron; and 20MW of ion cyclotron. These are the systems that will “light the fusion fire.”
The neutral beam system represents such an advance in all its parameters over present-day systems that it was decided some years ago to build the Neutral Beam Test Facility at Padua. This facility comprises two test-stands: SPIDER, which will test full-sized ion sources, and MITICA, which is a full-scale test of the ITER heating system.
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