Upgrade of the TCV tokamak, first phase: neutral beam heating system

Experiments on TCV are designed to complement the work at large integrated tokamak facilities (such as JET) to provide a stepwise approach to extrapolation to ITER and DEMO in areas where medium-size tokamaks can often exploit their experimental capabilities and flexibility. Improving the understanding and control requirements of burning plasmas is a major scientific challenge, requiring access to plasma regimes and configurations with high normalized plasma pressure and a wide range of ion to electron temperature ratios, including Te/Ti ∼ 1. These conditions will be explored by adding a 1 MW neutral heating beam to TCV's auxiliary for direct ion heating (2015) and increasing the ECH power injected in X-mode at the third harmonic (2 MW in 2015–2016). The manufacturing of the neutral beam injector was launched in 2014.