500,000 watts, four seconds: Successful start for the heating system with radio waves in Wendelstein 7-X
Great success for German-Belgian fusion research: An innovative heating system with radio waves was used for the first time in the world's largest stellarator Wendelstein 7-X at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Greifswald. Using a new type of antenna, the power of more than 500,000 watts could be radiated into a helium plasma for four seconds without any disruption to the plasma operation. The new ion heating system for the Greifswald fusion experiment is based on the design of the Laboratory for Plasma Physics at the Royal Military Academy in Brussels and was built in close cooperation with the Institute for Plasma Physics and the Central Institute for Engineering, Electronics and Analytics at Forschungszentrum Jülich.
The new heating system includes some improvements over traditional designs based on previous research in the TEXTOR tokamak experiment at Forschungszentrum Jülich.