Performance of a New Ion Source for KSTAR Tokamak Plasma Heating

In the experimental campaign of 2010 and 2011 on KSTAR, the NBI-1 system was equipped with one prototype ion source and operated successfully, providing a neutral beam power of 0.7-1.6 MW to the tokamak plasma. The new ion source planned for the 2012 KSTAR campaign had a much more advanced performance compared with the previous one. The target performance of the new ion source was to provide a neutral deuterium beam of 2 MW to the tokamak plasma. The ion source was newly designed, fabricated, and assembled in 2011. The new ion source was then conditioned up to 64 A/100 keV over a 2-hour beam extraction and performance tested at the NB test stand (NBTS) at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) in 2012. The measured optimum perveance at which the beam divergence is a minimum was about 2.5 µP, and the minimum beam divergent angle was under 1.0 ^o at 60 keV. These results indicate that the 2.0 MW neutral beam power at 100 keV required for the heating of plasma in KSTAR can be delivered by the installation of the new ion source in the KSTAR NBI-1 system.