Experimental Study of the Deformation Processes of Current-Carrying Elements of Protective Switches for Fusion Application

Nuclear fusion could ensure a large-scale, safe and virtually inexhaustible source of energy. Most of modern tokamaks have a superconducting magnet system, which gives many advantages, but use of superconductors requires the special methods and means for protection of the coils in case of quench or another abnormal situation to be implemented in its power supply systems. To avoid propagation of the resistive area, the coil current must be quickly reduced by inserting a discharge resistor into the circuit, which is achieved by means of DC circuit breaker. To improve reliability of the energy extraction, the DC circuit breaker is composed of two connected-in-series switching devices, namely, the main circuit breaker and the backup one. The back-up circuit breakers are usually activated by the detonation energy of the explosive charge. The paper will describe the experimental investigation of the deformation processes of destroyable current-carrying elements of backup circuit breakers.