• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.7
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• pp.2621-2627
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• 2023

In Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) experiments, to achieve long pulse and high-power ICRH system operation, a new kind of ICRH antenna has been designed. One of the most critical factors in limiting the operation of long pulse and high power is the intense heat load in the front face of the ICRH antenna, especially the Faraday Screen (FS). Therefore, the cooling channels of FS need to be designed. According to thermal-hydraulic analysis, the FS tubes are divided into several groups to achieve more excellent water cooling capability. The number of series and parallel tubes in one group is chosen as six. This antenna went into service in the spring of 2021, and it is delightful that the temperature distribution of the FS tube is below 400 ℃ in 14.5 s and 1.8 MW ICRH system operation. However, the active water-cooling design was not carried out on the upper and lower plates of FS, which led to severe ablations on that region under long pulse and high power operation, and the temperature is up to 800. Therefore, the upper and lower side plates of the FS were designed with water cooling based on thermal-hydraulic analysis. During the 2022 winter experiments, the temperature of ICRH antenna FS was lower than 400 in the pulse of 200s and the power of 1 MW operation.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.10
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• pp.3614-3619
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• 2022

To operate the ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH) antennas in a better heating state and produce relatively low impurities, it is necessary to control the antenna spectrum by changing the antenna phasing. As the electrical length of the antenna feeding transmission lines is changing as a matter of the standing wave pattern at the ceramic supports, 90° elbows, T-connectors and antenna loops, we chose to measure the current at the grounding points of the antenna loops by antenna strap probe. The voltage drops along a small, several millimeter-long paths at the end of the antenna loops give a signal that is proportional to the current in the antenna loop. Through the simulation of the antenna strap probe and the actual measurement of the antenna phasing under vacuum conditions, the reliability of the antenna strap probe based diagnostic system have been successfully proved. Moreover, this system was successfully applied to the ICRH daily experiments in the spring of 2021. In the near future, the active real-time feedback control of the antenna phasing system will be developed based on this diagnostic system in the EAST tokamak.