Subscribe options

Select your newsletters:

Please enter your email address:

@

Your email address will only be used for the purpose of sending you the ITER Organization publication(s) that you have requested. ITER Organization will not transfer your email address or other personal data to any other party or use it for commercial purposes.

If you change your mind, you can easily unsubscribe by clicking the unsubscribe option at the bottom of an email you've received from ITER Organization.

For more information, see our Privacy policy.

News & Media

Latest ITER Newsline

  • Test facility | How do electronics react to magnetic fields?

    A tokamak is basically a magnetic cage designed to confine, shape and control the super-hot plasmas that make fusion reactions possible. Inside the ITER Tokamak [...]

    Read more

  • ITER Robots | No two alike

    More than 500 students took part in the latest ITER Robots challenge. Working from the same instructions and technical specifications, they had worked in teams [...]

    Read more

  • Data archiving | Operating in quasi real time

    To accommodate the first real-time system integrated with the ITER control system, new components of the data archiving system have been deployed. Data archivi [...]

    Read more

  • Repairs | Setting the stage for a critical task

    Like in a game of musical chairs—albeit in slow motion and at a massive scale—components in the Assembly Hall are being transferred from one location to another [...]

    Read more

  • Image of the week | There is life on Planet ITER

    Dated April 2023, this new image of the ITER "planet" places the construction site squarely in the middle. One kilometre long, 400 metres wide, the IT [...]

    Read more

Of Interest

See archived entries

ITER NEWSLINE -

Ion source power supplies successfully tested in Italy

A schematic of the SPIDER power supply, describing the contributions of Europe (blue) and India (yellow).The factory acceptance tests for ISEPS carried out at the OCEM facility in San Giorgio di Piano, Italy were the final tests before before on-site delivery of the full first ISEPS unit. (Click to view larger version...)
A schematic of the SPIDER power supply, describing the contributions of Europe (blue) and India (yellow).The factory acceptance tests for ISEPS carried out at the OCEM facility in San Giorgio di Piano, Italy were the final tests before before on-site delivery of the full first ISEPS unit.
When the experimental program on the ITER-scale radio-frequency negative ion source gets underway at the PRIMA test facility in Italy, operators will be counting on power ... lots of it.

The ion-source test bed, called SPIDER, will be capable of running pulses of up to 3,600 seconds at maximum power with hydrogen or deuterium discharges. Designed to test the full-size ITER negative ion source, SPIDER will be twice as large as the largest existing negative ion source, ELISE, in Germany.

The main mission of the SPIDER test bed at PRIMA is to finalize the development of the ion sources required for the ITER neutral beam injectors and to test all essential aspects of the diagnostic neutral beam accelerator. The SPIDER power supply is composed of an acceleration grid power supply provided by India and an ion source extraction grid power supply and transmission line provided by Europe in order to feed the radio frequency ion source. The design and manufacture of the power supplies were carried out in collaboration with Fusion for Energy/RFX and the ITER Organization.

Representatives of the ITER Organization, the European Domestic Agency, OCEM, Himmelwerk, and Consorzio RFX (host to the PRIMA facility) were present for the final tests. (Click to view larger version...)
Representatives of the ITER Organization, the European Domestic Agency, OCEM, Himmelwerk, and Consorzio RFX (host to the PRIMA facility) were present for the final tests.
On 14 May 2014, the last components of the ion source and extraction grid power supply (ISEPS) successfully passed factory acceptance tests at the supplier facility in San Giorgio di Piano, Italy (OCEM Energy Technology). The radio frequency power supplies and the DC power supply (provided by OCEM) and the radio frequency generator (provided by sub-contractor Himmelwerk from Germany) were tested on dummy load.

Representatives from the ITER Organization, the European Domestic Agency (Fusion for Energy), the companies OCEM and Himmelwerk, and Consorzio RFX (host to the PRIMA facility) were present to witness the smooth conclusion of the tests.

The testing, carried out over a period of one month, involved running the power supplies at the maximum nominal power of 200kW for a period of 15 minutes.

Read more about the story on the European Domestic Agency website.

return to the latest published articles