Minimum Quench Energy Evaluation of ITER Toroidal Field Conductor Using an Inductive Heater

To keep a stable operation of the ITER Toroidal Field (TF) coil without quenching, it is necessary to know the threshold of allowable external heating energy, which is called minimum quench energy (MQE), of the TF conductor during the operation in ITER. To evaluate the MQE, a series of conductor heating tests has been performed during the TF Insert (TFI) test campaign. TFI is a single layer about 9-turn solenoid wound from ITER TF conductor. The coil diameter is 1.44 m and the conductor length is around 40 m. TFI is force-cooled by supercritical helium inside the TF conductor. For the TFI, 68 kA current had been applied under 10.8 T background field as rated operation condition. During its operation, the conductor was inductively heated by an inductive heating coil. Through the test, MQE of the TFI has been obtained.