Effect of Chrome Coating on Resistance of Sintered Joint for ITER Central Solenoid

The ITER Central Solenoid has 36 interpancake joints. The joints are required to have a resistance below 4 nOhm at 45 kA at 4.5 K. The US ITER Project Office developed and qualified a sintered joint for the interpancake joints that consistently showed exceptionally low dc resistance of 0.13 nOhm at up to 80 kA in the self-field of about 1.5 T. To provide a good current distribution in the joint, we removed chrome plating from the strands in this area. We built and tested four samples of the sintered joints before 2012. Such a low resistance prompted an investigation of the possibility of leaving the chromium on the strands during the joint preparation and still staying well below allowable resistance. Although removal of the chrome plating is not a very labor-intensive or time-consuming operation, it requires handling of harmful fumes and produces a solution containing hexavalent Cr, which is a hazardous substance. Elimination of the Cr removal step is a simplification of the fabrication process and therefore is a desirable act. We built two identical racetrack samples of the sintered joint and tested them in our joint test apparatus. One sample had Cr removed from the strands, the other had Cr intact. This paper provides a description of the test samples, fabrication steps, and results of the dc resistance measurements.