Main chamber wall plasma loads in JET-ITER-like wall at high radiated fraction

Description

Future tokamak reactors of conventional design will require high levels of exhaust power dissipation (more than 90% of the input power) if power densities at the divertor targets are to remain compatible with active cooling. Impurity seeded H-mode discharges in JET-ITER-like Wall (ILW) have reached a max- imum radiative fraction ( F rad ) of ∼75%. Divertor Langmuir probe (LP) measurements in these discharges indicate, however, that less than ∼3% of the thermal plasma power reaches the targets, suggesting a missing channel for power loss. This paper presents experimental evidence from limiter LP for enhanced cross-field particle fluxes on the main chamber walls at high F rad . In H-mode nitrogen-seeded discharges with F rad increasing from ∼30% to up to ∼75%, the main chamber wall particle fluence rises by a factor ∼3 while the divertor plasma fluence drops by one order of magnitude. Contribution of main chamber wall particle losses to detachment, as suggested by EDGE2D-EIRENE modeling, is not sufficient to explain the magnitude of the observed divertor fluence reduction. An intermediate detached case obtained at F rad ∼60% with neon seeding is also presented. Heat loads were measured using the main chamber wall thermocouples. Comparison between thermocouple and bolometry measurements shows that the frac- tion of the input power transported to the main chamber wall remains below ∼5%, whatever the divertor detachment state is. Main chamber sputtering of beryllium by deuterium is reduced in detached condi- tions only on the low field side. If the fraction of power exhaust dissipated to the main chamber wall by cross-field transport in future reactors is similar to the JET-ILW levels, wall plasma power loading should not be an issue. However, other contributions such as charge exchange may be a problem.

Abstract

EURATOM 633053

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