Development of high-current power supplies for the TCABR tokamak

Abstract

An upgrade is being conducted on the Tokamak à Chauffage Alfvén Brésilien (TCABR), which is a small tokamak (R0 = 0.62 m and a = 0.2 m) operated at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. An important part of this upgrade is the installation of additional poloidal field coils to allow for the generation of various divertor configurations, such as single-null, double-null, and snowflake divertor. The control of these various magnetic configurations requires the development of 17 robust and high-performance power supplies. To identify the most appropriate solution, thyristor-based and IGBT full-bridge converter are being considered as possible power electronic topologies. In this work, a comparison between these two topologies in terms of controllability and complexity is presented. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.