IAEA TM on Negative Ion Based Neutral Beam Injectors, in Padova, May 9-11,2005. DEVELOPMENT OF A DC 1MV POWER SUPPLY TECHNOLOGY FOR NB INJECTORS

Major issues of NBI power supplies are a high-speed switching, regulation and transmission of dc ultra high voltage, and suppression of surge energy input to the beam source at breakdown. A GTO(gate turn off thyristor) inverter type power supply where the control is performed at low voltage ac side was designed for the ITER NB. Based on the remarkable progress of a high power IEGT (injection enhanced gate transistor), the design of the inverter has been modified to increase an efficiency and compactness using such new elements. A power loss in the inverter is reduced to be 30% of the GTO inverter system. For the transmission line of the dc UHV with intermediate voltages, a disk shape multi-conductor bushing with a transmission line test chamber has been developed. Dimensions of the bushing are 1.8 m in diameter and 140 mm in thickness at the edge. Electric fields at the conductor surface and insulator surface were designed to be lower than 5 kV/mm and 7 kV/mm, respectively. An electric field at the bottom of the ground potential outer conductor was designed to be lower than 1.2 kV/mm to prevent particle levitation which triggers breakdowns. The prototype transmission line has passed the standard impulse test up to 1,300 kV. A dc UHV up to 1,175 kV was successfully sustained for 300 s. To prevent the electric damage of the beam source at the breakdown, core snubbers using Fe-based nanocrystalline soft magnetic materials are adopted to dissipate the surge energy.