A peer-reviewed paper detailing the HH70 HTS tokamak, titled “Design, commissioning and first operation of the high-temperature superconducting tokamak Honghuang 70” was recently published in Fusion Engineering and Design. The paper reviews the design, assembly, commissioning and initial operation of the HH70 tokamak.
HH70 is the world’s first fully high-temperature superconducting (HTS) tokamak. It is a medium-sized tokamak with modest aspect ratio, featuring a major radius R0 = 0.7 m and a minor radius a = 0.25 – 0.3 m. At the designed coil operation temperature of 20 K, the maximum designed magnetic field on the magnet coils Bmax = 2.5 T, and the toroidal magnetic field at the plasma center B0 = 0.6 T. All of HH70’s coils including the central solenoid (CS), the poloidal field (PF) coils and the toroidal field (TF) coils are constructed with the rare-earth barium copper oxide (ReBCO) HTS tape as the main current-carrying component. The construction and assembly of HH70 were completed in 2024. The coil commissioning results show that the behavior of the HTS coils agrees with engineering simulation results. The integrated commissioning verifies the capability of the supporting subsystems. This paper reviews the design, assembly, commissioning and initial operation of the HH70 tokamak, including its HTS coils and main supporting systems. The successful operation of HH70 verifies the feasibility of full-HTS tokamaks and provides valuable engineering experience.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fusengdes.2025.115341