Examination of Japanese Mass-Produced Nb₃ Sn Conductors for ITER Toroidal Field Coils

The performances of sixNb₃ Snconductors for the ITER Toroidal Field coils were tested. Four of them showed similar degradation rates of their current sharing temperaturesTcsover 1,000 electromagnetic cycles. By contrast, two of them showed sharpTcsdegradations at 50 cycles, after which their slopes became similar to those of the other four conductors. These two cables seemed to shrink under high magnetic fields during the first 50 cycles, which caused the sharpTcsdegradation. This shrinkage might arise from a decline in cable rigidity due to, for example, the deformation of strands or the breakage of theNb₃ Snfilaments. The four mass-produced conductors had roughly the same AC loss before cycling. After 1,000 cycles, the AC losses of all the conductors decreased markedly to less than half of those before cycling, and the values became approximately the same. After the test campaign, the destructive inspection of two of the conductors made it clear that the conductor had shrunk by about 520 ppm under the high magnetic field during the test. It was also clarified that some strands were visibly deformed under the high magnetic field, whereas those under the low magnetic field did not look distorted. This plastic deformation of the strands could be one of the major reasons for theTcsdegradation with cyclic operation.