page_title: Hybrid Illinois Device for Research and Applications
section_title: Center for Plasma Material Interactions (2014–present)
hierarchical_section_title: Hybrid Illinois Device for Research and Applications / History / Center for Plasma Material Interactions (2014–present)
caption_attribution_description: English: HIDRA being assembled at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
context_page_description: The Hybrid Illinois Device for Research and Applications is a medium-sized toroidal magnetic fusion device currently being assembled within the Center for Plasma Material Interactions in the Department of Nuclear, Plasma and Radiological Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, United States. It is anticipated that HIDRA will have first plasma by mid-September 2015 and start full experimental campaigns by December of that year. HIDRA is the former WEGA classical stellarator that was operated at the Max-Planck Institut für Plasmaphsyik in Greifswald Germany from 2001 to 2013.
  A unique aspect of HIDRA is that it can not only operate as a stellarator but also as a tokamak, hence the hybrid designation. In fact it should be possible to operate the two modes simultaneously. It is planned to operate up to 30 minutes of continuous plasma, with up to 60 minutes in the future and will concentrate on understanding the complex relationship between the plasma and materials inside the vacuum vessel of a fusion device
context_section_description: With W7-X operations starting in 2014, the space occupied by WEGA and its power systems was taking up much needed real-estate for the Thompson Scattering system and a cryogenic pellet injection system. During the 2013 SOFE conference, Daniel Andruczyk, a former Post-Doc on WEGA, met with some former colleagues and it was suggested that the University of Illinois could potentially take WEGA to the USA. After a year of negotiating between the director of the Center for Plasma Material Interactions, David Ruzic, the University and IPP, the funds were secured to make it happen. Andruczyk was brought on to lead the project of dismantling and shipping WEGA to the Urbana-Champaign Campus in Illinois. Upon arrival the Machine was renamed the Hybrid Illinois Device for Research and Applications. The Hybrid part being that it still has the tokamak capabilities, not only the stellarator ones.
  It took nearly 8 weeks over the autumn of 2014 of dismantling the device in Germany and was packed and shipped by Rhenus to the US in October. By early 4 November shipping containers worth of fusion device arrived by flat bed-truck to the University of Illinois at the Center for Plasma Material Interactions. Aside from lab personnel, the universities Facilities and services division were heavily involved in helping to off load, move in and assemble much of the larger, heavier components. Construction began in earnest with the transformers and rectifiers for the helical and toroidal magnetic coils moving in first. Once these were established then the base was brought in and the yokes, center-stack, half-tori and vertical field coils all installed over the next ten days.
  From there it took another 18 months of getting everything else assembled and hooked up. The 20 kV transformer needed for running the coils was made by Cooper electronics and the switching mechanism that to switch it all on was supplied by G&W. Quad-Plus was brought in to commission the rectifiers which allows the field shaping of the device. In this time water cooling tanks were brought in and installed and the universities pipe fitters built the cooling system for the machine and installed the water pump. The control system was written by senior undergrad and grad students and allows the machine to be controlled from one computer via a LabView program. This also sends out the trigger signals that are needed to fire the various data acquisition and diagnostic systems.
caption: HIDRA being assembled at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. (Photo: Daniel Andruczyk)
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