Qualification of the Joints for the ITER Central Solenoid

The ITER Central Solenoid has 36 interpancake joints, 12 bus joints, and 12 feeder joints in the magnet. The joints are required to have resistance below 4 nOhm at 45 kA at 4.5 K. The US ITER Project Office developed two different types of interpancake joints with some variations in details in order to find a better design, qualify the joints, and establish a fabrication process. We built and tested four samples of the sintered joints and two samples with butt-bonded joints (a total of eight joints). Both designs met the specifications. Results of the joint development, test results, and selection of the baseline design are presented and discussed in the paper.