Design and fabrication of the cryostat for the floating coil of the Levitated Dipole Experiment (LDX)

Author

Zhukovsky, A. ; Morgan, M. ; Garnier, D. ; Radovinsky, A. ; Smith, Brian ; Schultz, J. ; Myatt, L. ; Pourrahimi, S. ; Minervini, J.

Author_Institution

PSFC, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA

Volume

10

Issue

1

fYear

2000

fDate

3/1/2000 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1522

Lastpage

1525

Abstract

The Levitated Dipole Experiment (LDX) is a new, innovative magnetic confinement fusion experiment being designed and installed in collaboration with Columbia University at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The primary objective of the experiment is to investigate the possibility of steady-state, high-beta plasma confinement with near classical transport. The main component of the experiment is a levitated cryostat with a 5.7 T Nb/sub 3/Sn superconducting magnet, housed in an Inconel high pressure helium vessel. The pressure vessel is surrounded by a large thermal mass radiation shield and an outer vacuum shell, all of which are magnetically levitated inside a much larger vacuum chamber. The cryostat, now under construction is described in this paper. The cryostat keeps the magnet temperature between 5 and 10 K during 8 hours of levitated operation.

Keywords

cryostats; fusion reactor design; magnetic levitation; plasma toroidal confinement; pressure vessels; superconducting coils; superconducting magnets; 5 to 10 K; 5.7 T; 8 h; CrNi; He; Inconel high pressure vessel; LDX; Levitated Dipole Experiment; Nb/sub 3/Sn; classical transport; cryostat; floating coil; large thermal mass radiation shield; magnet temperature; magnetic confinement fusion; magnetic levitation; outer vacuum shell; steady-state high-beta plasma confinement; superconducting magnet; Coils; Collaboration; Fabrication; Magnetic confinement; Magnetic levitation; Magnetic shielding; Niobium; Plasma confinement; Steady-state; Superconducting magnets;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Applied Superconductivity, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1051-8223

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/77.828531

Filename

828531