Investigating the 10 kA HTS Module of the ITER Current Leads

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) has 60 high-temperature superconducting (HTS) current leads (CL) which have a nominal current of 68, 55 and 10 kA (depending on the type of magnet they have to supply) and provide a total current of 2.7 MA to the magnet system. The HTS module is a key part of CLs. This paper describes the simulation of the critical current in a multi-layer tape model as well as the special soldering technique developed for the HTS stack. In order to validate this technique, a 10 kA pre-prototype HTS module was made and tested in a setup that reproduces ITER conditions at ASIPP. The paper also briefly describes the overheating time test setup and the results.