Liquid nitrogen cooling for the compact ignition tokamak

The Compact Ignition Tokamak (CIT), which is currently being designed, will have toroidal and poloidal magnetic field coils pre-cooled by liquid nitrogen to a temperature near 80 degree K prior to each plasma pulse. The purpose is to gain the advantage of lower copper resistivity at reduced temperature. To maintain this temperature, the field coils, vacuum vessel, and surrounding structure will be enclosed within a cryostat. During a full-power D-T pulse, nuclear and resistive heating will impart a heat load of 11.0 GJ to the coils, which will raise the temperature of certain areas of the coils to near room temperature. The cryogenic system will supply 60,000 kg (19,500 gallons) of liquid nitrogen to remove this heat within a 60-minute cool-down period between pulses. A primary design consideration is that the nitrogen gas within the cryostat during a pulse will be activated by neutrons, producing nitrogen-13, which has a half-life of 10 minutes. This gas cannot be released into the environment without a sufficient decay period. The coolant nitrogen will therefore be contained within a closed (primary) circuit, and will be condensed in a heat exchanger. Liquid nitrogen from the supply dewars will be evaporated on the other side of the exchanger (the secondary side), and released to the atmosphere via a roof vent. Other operating modes (standby operation and initial cool-down from room temperature) are described in the paper. A safety analysis indicates that the cryogenic system will meet all applicable environmental requirements. 1 ref., 1 fig., 1 tab