Commissioning of the first WEST load-resilient long pulse ICRF launcher in the TITAN testbed and on WEST plasmas

Before the installation of the first ICRF launcher in WEST, dedicated RF, cold and hot leak tests have been performed in the TITAN test bed [1,2] (Bernard et al., 2011a,b). All the water circuits have been controlled in order to avoid any in-vessel leak. The impedance matching has been checked at low level (mW range) and the high RF voltage standoff has been validated at the nominal value of 27 kV peak. During the WEST C3a campaign, the commissioning of the first antenna has been successfully performed. About 0.6 MW of power has been coupled to the plasma, and the launcher’s load-resilience has been proved.