TFTR poloidal field coil lead splice program

The TFTR Poloidal Field Coils consist of nine ''upper'' and ''lower'' stacks. These were manufactured by Brown Boveri Corporation and Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). Brown Boveri manufactured stacks one through five and PPPL manufactured stacks six through nine. PPPL manufactured the stacks that were considered too large to ship safely over a long distance. The coils were manufactured with short stubs, for the lead stems, that projected perpendicularly to the plane of the coil. They were short because the impregnation process employed vacuum impregnation techniques that would have been difficult to accomplish with full-length lead stems projecting from the coil. Further, it was considered too dangerous to transport the coils with the full-length stems attached, due to their fragile nature. The attachment of the full-length lead stems was done at PPPL in their coil shop and TFTR Test Cell. Stacks eight and nine had to be done in the test cell, since they would not fit through the installation area doorway with the lead stems attached. In the interest of scheduling and time, the lead stem of the smaller coils (stacks three through five and six upper) were attached in the coil shop and the remaining in the test cell. Each coil was preimpregnated and pretested prior to the lead splice being performed. One advantage of delaying the lead splice to the coils was the ability to make last-minute decisions in the design of the termination details. The exact method for connecting the coils to the buswork and the supporting of the buswork had been left until the coils were installed. This was in order to more efficiently design around any potential interferences that became evident after installation