Development of 3kA conduction cooled HTS current lead system Original Research Article

The research and development of superconducting magnet energy storage (SMES) system, a national project, began in 1999. One of the purposes of this project is investigation concerning the application of high-temperature superconducting (HTS) SMES. As a part of this project, the 3 kA class HTS small model coil was manufactured in order to verify the possibility of realizing conduction cooled HTS SMES. Therefore, it is important to develop the conduction cooled current lead system for applying this coil. We developed a kA class conduction cooled HTS current lead system. This current lead system consists of the copper current lead and the YBaCuO (YBCO) HTS current lead. The YBCO bulk manufactured by Nippon Steel Corporation was applied to the HTS current lead. The YBCO bulk keeps high critical current density (Jc > 10,000 A/cm2) in the magnetic field (1 T) at 77 K compared with Bi2223 superconductor. The experiment of this HTS current lead system was carried out, and rated current of 3000 A was achieved successfully.