For the past ten years, cumulative average growth rate for electricity generation in India has been close to 6%. During the year 2016-17, total electricity generation was about than 1430 billion kW-hour or TW-hour. It will be more than 1500 TW-hour in 2017-18. Considering rate of economic growth, linkage between economic growth and electricity requirements, increasing urbanisation and current...
Research and Innovation contributes to several of the ten priorities of the European Commission for 2015-19. The EU's energy research policy contributes, in particular, to provide its citizens and businesses with secure and affordable energy, while also addressing the causes of climate change.
The next Research and Innovation Programme, covering the period 2021-2027, will build on the success...
The time and cost of further increasing the overall readiness level of fusion energy, which requires testing materials under extreme environment, data collection, analysis and new designs, can be significantly reduced with the advent of the fourth industrial revolution. The fourth industrial revolution is on its way. Known as Industry 4.0, it represents the current trend to use automation and...
A. Technologies for manufacturing of small and medium size Ion source (upto four RF driver) for positive and negative neutral beam systems have been evolved over last many decades and such ion sources are being successfully operated at various experimental facilities across the world. However, as the need arises for the larger size ion sources (eight driver) for ITER diagnostics and heating...
In tokamaks, baking of vacuum vessel and first wall components is a prerequisite in order to obtain impurity free plasmas. Baking is performed to remove impurities viz. H2, H2O and Hydro-Carbon from the vessel and first wall components. ADITYA tokamak has been upgraded ADITYA-U tokamak to achieve shaped plasmas. The ADITYA-U is equipped with a comprehensive baking system for heating the SS...
Tungsten (W) will be used in ITER as a Plasma Facing Material (PFM) in divertor due to its capability to handle high heat flux while having a low Hydrogen (H) isotope affinity. However in presence of fusion neutrons and alpha particles, tungsten can accumulate radiation damage, which might significantly enhance its H retention property. In order to investigate the effects of radiation damage...
The Electromagnetic Particle Injector (EPI) has the potential for delivering the radiative payload to the plasma center on a 3-4 ms time scale, much faster, and deeper, than what can be achieved using present methods. Predicting and controlling disruptions is an important and urgent issue for ITER. While a primary focus is the early prediction and avoidance of conditions favorable to a...
In general, the operation of AC discharges in small tokamaks requires the control of a few external parameters such as vertical and horizontal fields, external heating (where available), chamber conditioning and gas puff. The dynamics and type of control used are mostly based on experimental empirical learning, with different combinations of actuators depending on the tokamak device....
Turbulence spreading is the transfer of free turbulent energy from strongly driven (i.e., unstable regions) to weakly driven locations [1]. The net effect of this phenomenon is the radial redistribution of turbulent energy, modifying local plasma features. It has been pointed out that spreading may be important in setting the Scrape-Off Layer (SOL) width. The peak heat load onto the divertor...
For a burning plasma device like ITER, radiative power removal by seeded impurities will be inevitable to avoid divertor damage. Increasing divertor radiation by injecting low-Z impurities such as nitrogen, to reduce scrape-off layer heat flux and to cool the divertor plasma to detachment, is put forward as the primary method to achieve this goal. Here, the possibility of increasing the...
In the ITER, an important aspect of qualifying the components to the mandatory regulatory requirements, the system developers have a challenge to first design the components fulfilling guidelines of the ITER recommended French nuclear code RCC-MR (2007) and later on demonstrate to the regulator. It is even more involving for systems that are extending primary vacuum to the interspace and...
The Chinese Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR), complementing ITER, is aiming to demonstrate fusion energy production up to 200 MW initially and to eventually reach DEMO relevant power level, to manifest high duty factor of 0.3~0.5, and to pursuit tritium self-sufficiency with tritium breeding ratio (TBR) > 1. The key challenge to meet the missions of the CFETR is to run the machine in...
The results of a set of simulations of Alfvén modes driven by an energetic particle population are presented, with the specific aim of comparing energetic particle radial transport between single-n and multiple-n simulations. The hybrid reduced O($\epsilon^3_0$) MHD gyrokinetic code HMGC is used, retaining both fluid (wave-wave) and energetic particles nonlinearities. The code HMGC retains...
Two types of kink modes, fishbone and long-lived mode are experimentally and numerically studied at EAST tokamak. In high β_{P} plasma, sawtooth instability was replaced by a saturated 1/1 internal kink mode which either manifests itself as a periodical burst energetic ion related fishbone or as a long-lived mode which is associated to the core safety factor at q_0~1. The present of those 1/1...
Future devices like JT-60SA, ITER and DEMO require quantitative predictions of pedestal density and temperature levels, as well as divertor heat fluxes, to improve global confinement capabilities while preventing divertor erosion/melting in the planning of future experiments. Such predictions can be obtained from non-linear MHD codes like JOREK, for which systematic validation against current...
Key plasma physics and real-time control elements needed for robustly stable operation of high fusion power discharges in ITER have been demonstrated in US fusion research. Optimization of the current density profile has enabled passively stable operation without n=1 tearing modes in discharges simulating ITER’s baseline scenario with zero external torque. Stable rampdown of the discharge has...
An advanced molten salt (AMS), in which powders of hydrogen-soluble and chemically reactive metals such as titanium are mixed, is investigated as a potential self-cooled breeding blanket material. It is shown that hydrogen isotope uptake in a vanadium plate in molten salt FLiNaK is suppressed by the addition of Ti powders into the salt. In addition, the corrosion of candidate structural...
The Linear IFMIF Prototype Accelerator aims to operate in Rokkasho Fusion Institute a 125 mA/cw deuteron beam at 9 MeV In order to prove the technical feasibility of the IFMIF accelerators concept.
A 2.45 GHz ECR ion source developed by CEA-Saclay is designed to deliver 140 mA/100 keV CW D + beam. The low energy beam transfer line (LEBT) relies on a dual solenoid focusing system to...
In the presently available fusion reactors, cryogenic helium is an integral part for cooling the magnets in order to achieve super conductivity. Some of the fusion reactors use tritium as a nuclear fuel along with deuterium, in which a part of tritium is proposed to be breeded through lithium blanket covering the first wall of plasma. Since fusion reactors have very small burn up efficiencies...
Both tokamak scaling (ITER98y2) and...
In high microwave power applications like gyrotron, transmission line system, calorimetric dummy load, etc, requires design, modeling, simulation and evaluation of transmission line system before fabrication of the same is undertaken. Under the aegis of Department of Science and Technology (DST), a multi-institutional program for the development of a gyrotron operating at 42±0.2GHz/200kW/3secs...
Controlling the tearing mode (TM) is one of the major topics of fusion research, since TM degrades the plasma confinement and even induces major disruption if it is locked. Previous experimental and theoretical studies showed that the resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs) influence both the rotation and width of the TM. As a result, the static RMP could apply a net stabilizing and braking...
ITER cooling waters system consists of large piping network to remove the heat load of about 950MWatt through various branched connections. Many of the branches are connected to main pipes by half coupling full penetration weld joints. There is requirement is to have full penetration for all the joints however quality classification (QC-2), recommends only 10% testing of the total weldment. In...
Lead-Lithium (Pb-Li) alloy in its eutectic composition is one of the promising candidates to be used as liquid blanket in fusion reactor. Helium cooled Lead Lithium (EU-HCLL), Dual cooled Lead Lithium (US-HCLL), Indian LLCB are some of the concepts being explored worldwide for future fusion reactor [1]. In this scenario, the characterization of Pb-Li alloy becomes important to gainfully...
The research goals are determining the effect of nitrogen plasma on the tungsten and comparative analysis of the formation of tungsten fuzz on the helium plasma interaction on the initial surface of tungsten and on the surface of tungsten, previously subjected to nitriding. The experiments were carried out on an imitation stand with a plasma-beam installation. The device provides the following...
Here we report a novel design of a heating laser for the fast ignition, combining fundamental and second harmonics lights. Such a two-colors laser is expected to heat a dense core more efficiently than a laser only with a fundamental light. We chose a LBO (LiB3O5) crystal which can convert a focusing beam due to its large acceptance of phase matching angle. We experimentally demonstrated the...
The baseline approach to high gain ICF involves the implosion of capsules containing a layer of DT ice [1]. DT ice layer designs require a high convergence ratio (CR > 30) implosion, with a hot spot that is dynamically created from DT mass originally residing in a thin layer at the inner DT ice surface. Although high CR is desirable in an idealized 1D sense, it amplifies the deleterious...
Different Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) First Wall (FW) protections have been proposed in diverse conceptual designs that lead to very different irradiation conditions and macroscopic effects. A review is needed to understand their behavior. Some years ago a European proposal projected the possibility of non-protective FWs considering W and nano-tungsten. This work is describing in detail the...
A series of experiments has been conducted at AUG and TCV to disentangle the role of fueling, plasma triangularity and closeness to a double null (DN) configuration for the onset of the small ELM regime. At AUG, the role of the SOL density has been revisited. Indeed, it turns out that a large density SOL is not a sufficient condition to achieve the type-II (small) ELM regime. This has been...
The ITER Pre-Fusion Power Operating (PFPO) phase will include half-field/half-current (2.65T, 7.5 MA) and one-third field (1.8T, 5MA) operating scenarios, which ought to allow H-mode access even with limited heating [1].
While PFPO-1 relies only on ECRH and ICRH to achieve the H-mode, in PFPO-2 also the neutral beams will be applied. In the PFPO phases, the plasma will consist of either...
R. Manchanda1, M. B. Chowdhuri1, Nandini Yadava2, J. Ghosh1, 3, S. Banerjee1, Nilam Nimavat, K. Tahiliani, M. V. Gopalakrishna, U. C. Nagora1, P. K. Atrey1, J. Raval1, Y. S. Joisa1,
K. A. Jadeja1, R. L. Tanna1, and Aditya team
1Institute for Plasma Research, Bhat, Gandhinagar 382 428, India
2Gujarat University, Navrangpura, Ahmedabad 380 009, India
3Homi Bhabha National...
Future inertial fusion reactors are supposed to work with long pulses or with high repetition rates using repeated pellet implosions. In such extreme environments, the reactor wall materials will be disclosed to short X-ray pulses and fusion generated fragments. This will cause ablation to the wall material in the form of plasma that is expected to collide with each other in the center of the...
DIII-D experiments have demonstrated the expansion of the high-betaN hybrid scenario to the high density levels necessary for radiating divertor operation, leading to pedestal enhancement, and showed how the choice of injected impurity impacts the effectiveness of a radiating mantle solution, as well as the impurity transport to the core and the divertor. The scenario was made robust to...
Advanced tokamak scenario with central q close to 1 has been achieved on HL-2A tokamak. An ITB has been observed during the nonlinear evolution of a saturated long-lived internal mode (LLM) or fishbone activities in HL-2A discharges as the q-profile formed a very broad low-shear region with qmin ~ 1. Such steep ion temperature-gradient zone locates around r/a=0.5-0.6 with Ti>Te. The observed...
The interaction of a locked tearing mode with a non-axisymmetric control field is found to be in good qualitative agreement with predictions of a nonlinear resistive MHD model [1]. Locked tearing mode islands often lead to disruptions in tokamaks. However, experiments have shown that unlocking and rotation of the island by a rotating control field (CF) can postpone or prevent a disruption [2]....
In HL-2A low rotation and relatively low density plasmas, the critical threshold of the intrinsic error field penetration will be decreasing. And the multi-helicity islands can be seeded by the non-axisymmetric error field penetration, and lead to the change of rotation profile, enhanced transport or even disruption. Sheared flow arising from momentum injection can suppressed the coupled...
Resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs) can be used to mitigate or fully suppress the harmful Edge Localized Modes (ELMs). In DIII-D, the ELM suppression is observed to be correlated with the enhanced particle and heat transport near the pedestal top. Initial simulations using Gyrokinetic Toroidal Code (GTC) show that the kink responses to the 3D RMP have little effect on the growth rate of...
Edge Localised Modes (ELMs) are thought to be caused by a spectrum of magnetohydrodynamic instabilities, including the ballooning mode. While ballooning modes have been studied extensively both theoretically and experimentally, the focus of the vast majority of this research has been on isotropic plasmas. The prevalence of pressure anisotropy in modern tokamaks thus motivates further study of...
The evolution of the JET high performance hybrid scenario, including central accumulation of the tungsten (W) impurity, is reproduced with predictive multi-channel integrated modelling over multiple confinement times using first-principle based models. 8 transport channels ($T_i,T_e,n_D,n_{Be},n_{Ni},v_{tor},j$) are modelled predictively with self-consistent predictions for sources, radiation,...
It has been thought that asymmetric vertical displacement event (AVDE) disruptions in
ITER might produce large electromechanical forces on the walls and other conducting structures
surrounding the plasma.
It is shown that ITER
AVDE disruptions
should produce a small
asymmetric wall force, comparable to JET. This is demonstrated in simulations [1,2] with the M3D 3D MHD code...
M. Okabayashi
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, PO Box 451, Princeton, NJ 08543-0451, USA
mokabaya@pppl.gov
DIII-D experiments on control of locked tearing modes are in good qualitative
agreement with predictions of a non-linear reduced MHD code (AEOLUS-IT) [1].
Robust avoidance of locked tearing modes that may cause disruptions is a prerequisite
for successful ITER...
A novel capability has been added to the DIII-D neutral beam injection system, enabling in-shot variation of beam energy and current for the first time [1]. This new capability is now being explored as a tool for integrated control and optimization of equilibrium profiles and Alfvén eigenmode (AE) activity. The capability provides an alternative to the typically used pulse-width-modulation...
It is shown for the first time that global exhaust of helium, measured by effective helium particle confinement time (𝛕p,He), is improved during edge localized mode (ELM) suppression by resonant magnetic field perturbations (RMP) in high confinement (H-mode) ITER-shaped tokamak plasmas at DIII-D. An up to 40% reduction of 𝛕p,He during RMP-ELM suppression compared to ELMy H-mode discharges...
RMP ELM suppression experiments at ITER-like conditions (shape, collisionality, RMP spectrum) in DIII-D show little splitting of the heat flux to the divertor targets, despite robust splitting in the particle flux. This lack of divertor heat flux splitting is a potentially important result for ITER because splitting of the divertor heat flux into multiple lobes displaced from the primary...
First-principles-based multiscale neoclassical-and-turbulent understanding of the impurity transport and its effect on the main plasma confinement is one of the most important subjects in magnetic fusion research. Seeding of impurity particles was found to improve the plasma confinement in the so-called “RI-mode” of operation [Weynants et al., Nucl. Fusion 39 (1999)]. More recently tungsten...
The injection of boron (B) and boron nitride (BN) powders into ASDEX-Upgrade (AUG) H-mode discharges have shown the ability to effectively control tungsten influx in low density/collisionality operational regimes, similar to conventional boronization methods. A newly designed impurity powder dropper was installed onto AUG with 5m diameter BN powder, and 50 m B powder (99%+ purity) loaded...
A lithium vapor-box configuration [1] has been proposed to provide volumetric radiative dissipation in the divertor region of tokamak plasmas. While recent experiments have achieved continuous vapor shielding in close proximity to a lithium coated target in Magnum-PSI [2], this approach seeks to provide controlled detachment far from the divertor target, in a lithium vapor cloud maintained...
As one of typical blanket concepts for Chinese Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR), a conceptual structure of helium cooled solid breeder (HCSB) blanket was designed by USTC. Considering that electromagnetic load is one of the main concerns for the blanket module, a FEM (finite element method) model of the HCSB was developed and the electromagnetic analysis of the blanket module was...
Steady-State Superconducting Tokamak-1 (SST-1) has 16 Toroidal field (TF) and 9 superconducting poloidal field (PF) coils rated for 10 kA DC. TF coils are connected in series and operated in DC condition, whereas PF coils are operated independently in pulse mode. SST-1 current feeder system (CFS) houses 9 pairs of PF superconducting current leads and 1 pair of TF superconducting current leads....
Tight regulation of the burn condition in ITER has been proven possible even under time-dependent variations in the fuel concentration by the use of robustification techniques. One of the most fundamental control problems arising in ITER and future burning-plasma tokamaks is the regulation of the plasma temperature and density to produce a determined amount of fusion power while avoiding...
Solenoid free start-up scenario is the way to utilize loop voltage from the evolution of equilibrium field using outer PF coils. Also, it can be expected to be as an attractive start-up scheme in the fusion machines with low aspect ratio since flux from external inductance change can be utilized. The solenoid free start-up experiments using outer PF coils have been conducted in various...
The ITER Cryostat, the largest stainless steel vacuum pressure chamber ever built which provides the vacuum confinement to components operating in ITER ranging from 4.5 k to 80 k. Cryostat Design Model was qualified[1] by ITER. As a Safety Important Class system, Design qualification at every change in its development and installation phases is mandatory. The Cryostat system is currently at...
R.C. O’Neill1, M. Brookman1, J.S. deGrassie1, B. Fishler1, M. LeSher1, C. Moeller1, C. Murphy1, A. Nagy2, M. Smiley1, J. F. Tooker1, H. Torreblanca1
1General Atomics, PO Box 85608, San Diego, California 92186-5608, USA
2 Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton NJ 08543, USA
Corresponding author: oneill@fusion.gat.com
A new current drive system is being designed and...
Significant progress in applying ICRF power to ASDEX Upgrade (AUG) has been achieved in the last years; this progress has been associated with a similar progress in our understanding and capability to model the relevant processes. The two main challenges of the ICRF system (power coupling and impurity production) have been tackled successfully.
First, the outer mid-plane gas injection...
Uncontrolled termination of post-disruption runaway electron (RE) current can cause deep localized melting of the first wall and this poses a serious challenge to the successful operation of fusion grade tokamaks, including ITER. Since the deconfinement of REs depends on the timescale of flux surface reformation and the plasma stability itself is affected by the runaway current, the...
Vertical displacement events (VDEs) where the plasma moves rapidly towards the wall can cause large electromagnetic forces on the vessel structures with possible damaging effects for large tokamaks. Non-axisymmetric modes developing during the VDE can lead to asymmetric, sometimes rotating forces on the vessel which can be even more severe. Large-scale 3D simulations play a crucial role on the...
The Divertor Tokamak Test Facility (DTT) is a new tokamak whose
construction has recently been approved by the Italian government. DTT
will be a high field superconducting toroidal device (6 T) carrying
plasma current up to 6 MA in pulses with length up to 100s, with an
up-down symmetrical D-shape defined by major radius R=2.10 m, minor
radius a=0.65 m and average triangularity 0.3. The main...
Plasma termination by excess fuelling or impurity interaction is a safety relevant event in potential fusion reactors. Sudden termination of plasma operation is an aspect that enters material requirements in terms of released energies, localization and respective time-scales of the plasma terminating event. In tokamaks, such events may lead to disruptions or thermal quenches. While disruptions...
Stable and robust ITER Baseline Scenario demonstration discharges have been achieved in DIII-D at zero injected input torque (matching the ITER LSN shape including the aspect ratio, betaN=1.9-2.05, and q95=3), and repeated under various conditions (Ip, density, wall conditions). However, an alternate route to Q=10 conditions has been explored that starts at higher q95 and maximum BT....
We present new experimental measurements of the Lower Hybrid (LH) wave electric field vector, $E_{LH}$, obtained in Alcator C-Mod and provide a direct comparison with 3D full-wave COMSOL simulations using the cold plasma dielectric tensor and reflectometry measured density profiles. Two key results are reported: 1) The direction of $E_{LH}$ was found to have a substantial poloidal component...
Effective power exhaust by impurity seeding and its dependence on the gas species used was demonstrated in island divertor configurations for the first time at Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X).
A systematic set of experiments has been conducted during the first island divertor campaign which show that switching from Neon (Ne) to nitrogen (N2) as seeding gases enables switching from global to more...