A new approach to passive protection against high energy and high current breakdowns in the ITER NBI accelerator

The energy stored in the 1 MV ITER Neutral Beam Injector power supply system will exceed by far the energy stored in the existing largest NB Injectors; as a consequence, the limitation of the grid breakdown effects–grids damage and Electro Magnetic Interference emission–are critical issues. In the present ITER NBI reference design the mitigation system is based on the concept of the concentrated core snubber which, due to the large amount of stored energy, is a huge component. Furthermore, in the NBI a relatively large part of HV capacitance to ground remains downstream the core snubber, so neither the arc peak current nor the high-frequency oscillations can be effectively limited. Moreover, the concentrated core snubber is ineffective in limiting the voltage reversal caused by internal insulation fault, increasing the risk of cascade failures in components like HV bushing and transmission line. The paper proposes an alternative approach to limit the grid breakdown effects, based on the concepts of Damper Resistor- substituting the direct connection to ground of the zero-potential accelerating grid – and of Distributed Core Snubber (DCS) – installed along the whole length of the transmission lines. The DCS concept has been subjected also to experimental validation by a small scale setup supported by electrical modelling.