Results of the SINGAP Neutral Beam Accelerator Experiment at JAEA

IRFM (CEA Cadarache) and JAEA Naka have entered into a collaboration in order to test a SINGAP [1] accelerator at the JAEA Megavolt Test Facility (MTF) at Naka, Japan. Whereas at the CEA testbed the acceleration current was limited to 0.1 A, at JAEA 0.5 A is available. This allows the acceleration of 15 H- beamlets in SINGAP to be tested and a direct comparison between SINGAP and MAMuG [2] to be made. High-voltage conditioning in the SINGAP configuration has been quite slow, with 581 kV in vacuum achieved after 140 hours of conditioning. With 0.1 Pa of H2 gas present in the accelerator 787 kV could be achieved. The conditioning curve for MAMuG is 200 kV higher. SINGAP beam optics appears in agreement with calculation results. A beamlet divergence better than 5 mrad was obtained. SINGAP accelerates electrons to a higher energy than MAMuG. Measurements of the power intercepted on one of the electron dumps have been compared with EAMCC code [3] calculations. Based on the experiments described here, electron production by a SINGAP accelerator scaled up to ITER size was estimated to be too high for comfort