The tritium operations experience on TFTR
- Princeton Univ., NJ (United States). Plasma Physics Lab.
- Los Alamos National Lab., NM (United States); and others
The Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) tritium gas system is administratively limited to 5 grains of tritium and provides the feedstock gas for the neutral beam and torus injection systems. Tritium operations on TFTR began with leak checking of gas handling systems, qualification of the gas injection systems, and high power plasma operations using using trace amounts of tritium in deuterium feedstock gas. Full tritium operation commenced with four highly diagnosed neutral beam pulses into a beamline calorimeter to verify planned tritium beam operating routines and to demonstrate the deuterium to tritium beam isotope exchange. Since that time, TFTR has successfully operated each of the twelve neutral beam ion sources in tritium during hundreds of tritium beam pulses and torus gas injections. This paper describes- the TFTR tritium gas handling systems and TFTR tritium operations of the gas injection systems and the neutral beam ion sources. Tritium accounting and accountability is discussed, including tritium retention issues of the torus limiters and beam impinged surfaces of the beamline components. Also included is tritium beam velocity analysis that compares the neutral beam extracted ion species composition for deuterium and tritium and that determines the extent of beam isotope exchange on subsequent deuterium and tritium beam pulses. The required modifications to TFTR operating routines to meet the US Department of Energy regulations for a low hazard nuclear facility and the problems encountered during initial tritium operations are described.
- Research Organization:
- Princeton Univ., NJ (United States). Plasma Physics Lab.
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-76CH03073
- OSTI ID:
- 10179992
- Report Number(s):
- PPPL-CFP-3149; CONF-940843-2; ON: DE94018340
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 18. European symposium on fusion technology (SOFT-18),Karlsruhe (Germany),22-26 Aug 1994; Other Information: PBD: [1994]
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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