±¬×ߺÚÁÏ

Last week, the heads of the ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ Magnets Division, Neil Mitchell and Arnaud Devred, together with Deputy Director-General Gary Johnson, colleagues-that-have-turned-friends from other departments, and the European Domestic Agency took the chance to raise their champagne glasses to Alexander Shikov, Vice-Director of the Bochwar Institute in Moscow and the mastermind behind the outstanding efforts invested by Russia in the development of the ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ superconductors.

The Bochwar Institute is building on more than 40 years of experience on manufacturing superconductors made of niobium-titanium and niobium-tin. The first-in-the-world superconductiing magnet systems of the T-7 and T-15 tokamaks were fabricated out of these developed superconducting strands.

The production of the conductors for ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ's magnets is the biggest-ever procurement for the Bochwar Institute—some 120 tonnes of niobium-titanium (NbTi) for the poloidal field conductors and 100 tonnes of niobium-tin (Nb3Sn) for the toroidal field conductors to be produced at the Chepetsky Mechanical Plant. This totals to about one-fifth of the total amount needed for the construction of the ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ magnet system.

The latest testing of NbTi and Nb3Sn conductors have confirmed their highest quality and the soundness of the ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ toroidal and poloidal field conductor designs.