SST-1 Status and Plans

The Steady State Superconducting Tokamak (SST-1) is currently being refurbished in a mission mode at the Institute for Plasma Research with an ultimate objective of producing the first plasma in early 2012. Since January 2009, under the SST-1 Mission mandate, a broad spectrum of refurbishment activities have been initiated and pursued on several subsystems of SST-1. Developing sub-nano-ohm leak-tight joints in the magnet winding packs, developing single-phased LN₂-cooled thermal shields, developing supercritical-helium-cooled 5-K thermal shields for magnet cases, ensuring thermal and electrical isolations between various subsystems of SST-1, testing of each of the SST-1 toroidal field (TF) magnets at 4.5 K with nominal currents, testing each of the modules and octants of the SST-1 machine shell in representative experimentally simulated scenarios, augmentation and reliability establishment of the SST-1 vacuum vessel baking system, time synchronizations among various heterogeneous subsystems of SST-1, large data-storage scenarios, and integrated engineering testing of the first phase of the plasma diagnostics are some of the major refurbishment activities. Presently, the SST-1 device integration is in full swing. The cold test of the assembled SST-1 TF and poloidal field magnets began in December 2011. Following the successful testing of the SST-1 superconducting magnet system and engineering validations of the machine shell, the first plasmas will be attempted in SST-1. The first plasma will be ~ 100-kA limiter assisted with the available volt-seconds and could possibly be assisted by ECCD/LHCD.