Status of PRIMA, the test facility for ITER neutral beam injectors

Abstract

The ITER project requires additional heating by two neutral beam injectors, each accelerating to 1MV a 40A beam of negative deuterons, delivering to the plasma about 17MW up to one hour. As these requirements have never been experimentally met, it was decided to build a test facility, PRIMA (Padova Research on ITER Megavolt Accelerator), in Italy, including a full-size negative ion source, SPIDER, and a prototype of the whole ITER injector, MITICA, aiming to develop the heating injectors to be installed in ITER. The Japan and the India Domestic Agencies participate in the PRIMA enterprise; European laboratories, such as KIT-Karlsruhe, IPP-Garching, CCFE-Culham, CEA-Cadarache and others are also cooperating. In the paper the main requirements are discussed and the design of the main components and systems are described. © 2013 American Institute of Physics.