A review of the structural aspects of the large coil task

The Large Coil Task (LCT) was initiated a decade ago by the United States (US), EURATOM (EU), Japan (JA), and Switzerland (CH) unter the auspices of the International Energy Agency (IEA) to develop superconducting magnets for toroidal field coils for tokamak fusion reactors. Under the IEA agreement, EU, JA, and CH each fabricated one coil and shipped it to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORL), where the coils were assembled, along with three US coils (GD, GE, and WH), in the International Fusion Superconducting Magnet Test Facility (IFSMTF) which was designed and built at ORNL. The US Department of Energy is the operating agent. This paper concentrates on those aspects of the tests most relevant for fusion reactor magnets: the structural measurements and simulated nuclear heating tests. Other results have been recently reported (Lubell 1986, Shen 1986b). We use the data on the US PB coils (GD and GE) and the US FF coil (WH) to illustrate the results. It is gratifying to report that all six coils have achieved 100% design current at 8-T field and that in a symmetric torus arrangement all six coils have been simultaneously energized to 8 T. (orig./GL)