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Development of a Nb3Al conductor to be applied to a fusion reactor and its application to a large superconducting coil.

[In Japanese. / En japonais.]

Author(s) : KOIZUMI N., OKUNO K., NAKAJIMA H., et al.

Type of article: Article

Summary

The Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute has been involved in developing niobium-aluminium conductors since the middle of the 1980s based on the consideration that niobium-aluminium conductors are capable of producing a higher magnetic field than those owing to the extremely high critical-current density in high magnetic fields. At the beginning of the work, a fabrication technique for niobium-aluminium strands using a Jelly-roll process was established. This process requires a heat treatment at 750 °C for 50 h instead of a temperature of more than 1,800 °C as required by the conventional method. Using this technique, about 1 ton of strands was produced and a 150-m niobium-aluminium cable-in-conduct conductor was fabricated. For the next step, to demonstrate the applicability of the niobium-aluminium conductor to a large coil, a coil of 1.5-m in diameter, called the niobium-aluminium Insert, was manufactured. A react-and-wind method was tried for the production process as it simplifies the fabrication of large coils such as an ITER-TF coil. Performance tests of the niobium-aluminium Insert were conducted in 2002. It could be charged to the designed point of 13 T and 46 kA without showing any instability. Thus, the world's first large superconducting coil using a niobium-aluminium conductor was successfully developed, thus indicating the possibility of producing fusion magnets that can operate in higher magnetic fields than those used with niobium-aluminium conductors.

Details

  • Original title: [In Japanese. / En japonais.]
  • Record ID : 2005-0547
  • Languages: Japanese
  • Source: Cryogenics/ Cryog. Eng. - vol. 38 - n. 8
  • Publication date: 2003

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