W (tungsten) Environment in Steady-state Tokamak
WEST validates and fatigue-tests the ITER actively-cooled tungsten divertor components
during the ITER construction phase and prepare their safe operation.
The mastery of nuclear Fusion and the construction of the ITER tokamak will inevitably involve a number of challenges. The WEST tokamak is dealing with one of them already: the divertor.
WEST (acronym derived from W Environment in Steady-state Tokamak, where W is the chemical symbol for tungsten) is the transformation of the Tore Supra tokamak from a limiter to a divertor configuration.
Equipped with superconducting coils and tungsten plasma-facing actively cooled components, the WEST tokamak has achieved a new plasma duration record of over 6 minutes, with a steady-state temperature of 50 million degrees Celsius (4 keV).
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