Works Preparatory to Long-Pulse/Steady-State Experiments in LHD

A steady state discharge for more than t hour with 3 MW heating power is a goal in the early stage of the LHD project. All the coils are superconducting, the vacuum vessel and the divertor plates are cooled by water, and a long pulse operation in heating devices (ECH, ICRF, NBI) is available. One of the concerns for this operation is an impact of residual microwave power upon rubber gaskets and windows, because the gaskets and/or the windows could be damaged by absorbing the microwave power. In order to avoid an unexpected catastrophe during the experiments due to the microwave effect, a series of tests has been carried out for several fypes of gate valves and windows with 84 GHz microwave incidence. The results suggest that (1) a gap in a SS flange as narrow as 0.2 mm in front of the gaskets is sufficient to prevent the power penetrating into the gasket region, (2) a fused quartz window absorbs much less power than a kovar-seal window does, (3) a mesh of 100 vrires/inch is effective to reduce the power flow to the windows or the gate valves. A simplified detector for the microwave is developed in order to measure the residual power distribution outside a plasma in the vacuum vessel.