Performance of thermal shields of LHD cryostat cooled by gaseous helium with parallel paths

The Large Helical Device is the largest cryogenic apparatus for a research of fusion plasma. Thermal shields are installed to reduce heat loads to the superconducting coils. Since the total area is very wide, seamless pipes were adopted to reduce the possibility of helium leakage, and parallel cooling path is indispensable to reduce the pressure drop. Temperature differences between parallel paths will be enlarged with the procedure of cool-down, but the final temperature should be determined uniquely by each heat load in the case of gaseous helium. The number of parallel paths of the thermal shields for the plasma vacuum vessel and the cryostat vessel are set to 20 and 10, respectively, to form the periodic symmetry. The pipes were attached on the segmented plates of SUS316 by metal cleats mechanically and by high conductive epoxy resin thermally. The maximum temperature difference between the outlets of the paths was enlarged with the procedure of cool-down, but it was saturated within 40% of the average temperature rise. This difference is allowable in this system, and the temperature differences are coincide the difference of area due to the irregular shape.