Construction and operation performance of the 80 kA current leads used for the test of the ITER toroidal field model coil in the TOSKA facility

For the test of the ITER TFMC in the TOSKA facility of the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, two 80 kA current leads were designed and manufactured. Based on the experience coming from the performance of the 30 kA forced-flow current leads, the 80 kA leads were designed in a continuous manner. During the TFMC experiment, various optimization runs were performed at 0, 40 and 80 kA. It could be demonstrated that the leads were operated with the designed mass flow rates. Especially, the Nb₃Sn inserts used in the lower part of the heat exchanger behave as expected. The slightly different mass flow rate of both terminals can be explained by different RRR of the copper of the heat exchanger. The 80 kA current leads display the highest operating sc coil current reported up to now.