Qualification tests for ITER TF conductors in SULTAN

From February 2007 to May 2008, 18 short length conductor sections have been tested in SULTAN for design verification and manufacturer qualification of the ITER Toroidal Field (TF) conductor. The test program is focussed on the current sharing temperature, T-cs, at the nominal operating conditions, 68 kA current and 11.15T effective field, which can be fully reproduced in the SULTAN test facility. A broad range of results was observed, with over 2 K difference among the T-cs of the conductors. In average, the results are poorer compared to the potential performance estimated from the strand scaling law. The key parameters to mitigate the degradation are not yet clearly identified. The experimental challenges to test conductors with performance degradation are highlighted, including enhanced instrumentation sets, the application of gas flow calorimetry to sense the current sharing power and the post-processing of voltage data to cancel the transverse potential across the cable. The updated schedule of the tests in SULTAN is presented with the short-term action plan for conductor test. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.