High power negative ion sources for fusion at the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (invited)

Technologies producing high power negative ion beams have been highly developed over the years at Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute for use in neutral beam injectors for heating the thermonuclear fusion plasmas. At present, it is possible to produce multiampere H−/D− ion beams quasicontinuously at energies of more than a few hundred keV with a good beam optics of beamlet divergence of a few mrad. Based on these technologies, two research and development projects have been initiated; one is to develop a 22 A/500 keV/10 s D− ion source for the neutral beam injector for JT-60U, and the other is to develop a 1 A/1 MeV/60 s H− ion source to demonstrate high current negative ion acceleration up to the energy of 1 MeV, the energy required for the neutral beam injector for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.