Performance of the supercritical helium cooling loop for the JET divertor cryopump

A supercritical helium cooling loop for the two JET divertor cryopumps has been tested, commissioned and is operational practically uninterrupted for over one year. Operation experience under a number of different boundary and transient conditions have been obtained. The flow of the supercritical helium (6 g/s, 2.7 bar) is driven by the main compressor of the JET helium refrigerator passing a heat exchanger where it is subcooled to 4.1 K before entering the two cryopumps which are an assembly of two 60 m long and 20 mm diameter corrugated stainless steel tubes. By using a dedicated cold ejector which is driven by the main flow and where the expansion from 12 bar to 2.7 bar takes place increases the flow of supercritical helium up to ∼17 g/s. The steady state thermal load to the cooling loop of the cryopump is < 80 W but during transient conditions in particular due to nuclear heating in the active phase of JET considerably higher transient heat loads can be accepted by the loop. Details about the steady state and transient thermal conditions as well as the cooldown and warm up behavior of the loop and the interaction of the supercritical loop with the operation of other plant equipment will be discussed in the paper