Innovative Concepts in the DTT Neutral Beam Injector

Abstract

The main purpose of the divertor tokamak test (DTT) facility is to study alternative solutions to mitigate the issue of the power exhaust, under integrated physics and technical conditions relevant to ITER and DEMO. One of the most complex and innovative subsystems of the entire project is certainly the negative-ion-based neutral beam injector (NBI), meant to inject 10 MW of auxiliary power with a beam of 510 keV deuterium neutrals. This contribution describes the conceptual design of the beamline for the DTT NBI system, with a particular focus on the innovative technical solutions adopted to fulfill the requirements and maximize the performance. The DTT NBI is required to operate with high efficiency in several operating scenarios, covering a large range of beam energies, between 10% and 100% of the nominal value (510 keV). To reach this challenging goal, an innovative accelerator design, the spherical and lemon hyperlens grids (SLHGs), has been developed. The implementation of this design concept of the accelerator has recently become possible thanks to recent improvements in additive manufacturing (AM) technology. Another original aspect of the DTT NBI, compared to existing devices, regards the vacuum pumping system, which will be based on nonevaporable getter (NEG) pumps. This will represent the first application of the NEG technology to an NBI for the heating and current drive system of a fusion experiment, with a possible simplification of the overall construction, with respect to typical solutions based on cryogenic pumps. Other innovative solutions are the cylindrical sawtooth structure (CSS) for the neutralizer panels and the stray field shielding system (SFSS) with encapsulated neutralizer. This article provides an overview of the injector for DTT NBI with a particular focus on innovative technical solutions.