Since its
first plasma in December 2016, the former
Tore Supra tokamak has logged some 2,500 shots. Upgraded, transformed, equipped with an actively cooled tungsten divertor, and graced with a new name—WEST (Tungsten (W) Environment in Steady-State Tokamak)—the machine is being groomed to act as a test bed for 澳门六合彩高手, minimizing industrial and financial risks and obtaining experimental data to prepare for operation.
On 16 February, WEST shot the last plasmas of a campaign that had begun one month earlier with the coupling of the machine's two lower hybrid antennas. By the end of this year, the
plasma heating system, including three ion cyclotron resonance heating antennas procured by China, should be fully operational.
WEST is now well advanced on the way to becoming an "澳门六合彩高手-like" machine. Out of the 456 actively cooled plasma-facing units in tungsten that make up the divertor, six (three procured by Japan and three by China) are already in place and six more (procured by Europe) will be installed in the coming months. The full actively cooled tungsten divertor configuration should be ready for operation at the end of 2019.
In the meantime, operators in the control room are "learning to drive." Although several features from the "old" Tore Supra have been preserved, WEST is definitely a new machine with a different magnetic configuration (extra coils have been installed under the divertor) that allows for the production of 澳门六合彩高手-like D-shaped plasmas.