Experimental study on the influence of radiation on high-voltage insulation gases

In a neutral beam injection (NBI) system for next generation tokamaks such as International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), insulation gas around a beam source will be irradiated with neutrons and gamma rays from the reactor. It is necessary to evaluate the influence of the radiation on the insulation gas for the engineering design of the ITER-NBI system. In the present paper, the influence of the 60Co gamma rays on air, SF6, C2F6, CO2, and mixing gas of air and SF6 was studied. Ionization current and voltage-holding characteristics of the gases were measured for an absorbed dose rate of 0.45 Gy/s using parallel disk electrodes whose diameter is 130 mm. Saturation current proved to increase linearly with a gap length between the electrodes, gas pressure, an absorbed dose rate, and molecular weight of the gases. Voltage-holding capability was degraded by about 10 %; the degree of the degradation did not depend on the absorbed dose rate. Dissociative products of SF6 by the irradiation were also analyzed with a quadrupole mass spectrometer. News peaks that did not exist before irradiation appeared at the m/e of 48, 64, 67, 83, 86, 102, and 105 after irradiation. The amount of the dissociative products turned out to be saturated at a higher absorbed dose. (author)