Development of the first non-planar REBCO stellarator coil using VIPER cable

Abstract

Abstract The benefits of operating fusion devices, such as tokamaks and stellarators, at high fields make high-temperature superconducting magnets necessary to realize a compact fusion power system. Superconducting stellarators, such as W7-X, have used standard low-temperature superconductor technology niobium-titanium. ARPA-E has recently funded a two-year project led by the startup Type One Energy and involving the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Plasma Science to design and fabricate the first non-planar high-temperature superconductor (HTS) rare-earth barium copper oxide (REBCO) coil for a high-field stellarator based on the SPARC tokamak’s VIPER cable concept. The design consists of a 1.5-turn non-planar REBCO coil supported by a pair of 3D printed stainless steel radial plates. The ultimate goals of the project are to determine if commercial REBCO tapes and additive manufacturing can be used to fabricate high field ( ⩾ 10 T ) non-planar coils with tight bending radii ( ≃ 100 m m ) and with a degradation of the critical current smaller than 20% with respect to the expected performance. In this work we present numerical analysis for non-planar coils (critical current, magnetic field map, Lorentz forces and quench aspects) at the operating conditions of 77 K and 20 K and the fabrication and testing in liquid nitrogen (77 K) of the first two non-planar demonstrators for stellarators based on a VIPER cable. The first demonstrator is a short NOn-planar VIPER cabLe (cable demonstrator at which we will refer to as NOVEL) equipped with 100 HTS REBCO tapes and with a critical current of 5700 A at 77 K (self-field); the second is a MultIple turns (1.5-turns) NOn-plANar coil (coil demonstrator at which we will refer to as MINOAN) equipped with 30 HTS tapes and with a critical current of 2100 A at 77 K (self-field). Both demonstrators were tested at 77 K (liquid nitrogen bath) and the results showed that—even after being bent into non-planar shapes with bend radii ≃ 100 m m —the degradation of the critical current I c was within 15%, meeting the expected goals of the project.