MITICA Cryoplant

Abstract The ITER Neutral Beam Test Facility (NBTF), called PRIMA (Padova Research on ITER Megavolt Accelerator), is hosted in Padova, Italy and includes the MITICA experiment – a full-scale prototype of the ITER heating neutral beam injector (HNB). The large cryopump is intended to absorb the gas used to neutralize the high energy beams of the MITICA experiment. The cryopump is cooled by a dedicated cryoplant based on a Helial LF refrigerator by Air Liquide Advanced Technologies. The plant delivers up to 800 W of cooling power at 4.5 K. A specifically designed Auxiliary Cold Box (ACB) is capable to provide a He flow of 220 g/s at 81 K & 40 g/s at 4.6 K to the thermal shields and the cryosorption panels respectively. This cryoplant has a high grade of versatility needed to cope with the highly variable heat loads as well as with the different modes of operation. This paper presents the design of the cryoplant and highlights the various stages of the installation, commissioning and final acceptance tests.