An overview of the EAST project

The China national project of experimental advanced superconducting tokamak (EAST) has finished its construction phase and in the physical operation phase now in the Institute of Plasma Physics, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP). The EAST is a full superconducting tokamak with a non-circle cross-section of the vacuum vessel and the active cooling plasma facing components. The project consists of a superconducting system tokamak machine, a large scale cryogenic and refrigerator system, power supply system, plasma current drive and heating system and other six subsystems. The first engineering commissioning of the EAST superconducting tokamak has been performed successfully in February 2006. The commissioning results set up the confidence to start physical operation successfully in August 2006. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.