a b s t r a c tNew linear plasma devices are currently being constructed or planned in the Trilateral Euregio Cluster (TEC) to meet the challenges with respect to plasma surface interactions in DEMO and ITER: i) MAGNUM-PSI (FOM), a high particle and power flux device with super-conducting magnetic field coils which will reach ITER-like divertor conditions at high magnetic field, ii) the newly proposed linear plasma device JULE-PSI (FZJ), which will allow to expose toxic and neutron activated target samples to ITER-like fluences and ion energies including in vacuo analysis of neutron activated samples, and iii) the plasmatron VISION I, a compact plasma device which will be operated inside the tritium lab at SCK-CEN Mol, capable to investigate tritium plasmas and moderately activated wall materials. This contribution shows the capabilities of the new devices and their forerunner experiments (Pilot-PSI at FOM and PSI-2 Jülich at FZJ) in view of the main objectives of the new TEC program on plasma surface interactions.

The use of active charge exchange recombination spectroscopy (CXRS) as a diagnostic for fusion-produced alpha particles on ITER is constrained by the signal-to-noise ratio, which is determined by the intensity of the line of interest, the optical throughput of the diagnostic, the neutral beam penetration, and the intensity of bremsstrahlung radiation. The CX spectral line for fast ions has been modelled together with the expected background emission and we present the signal-to-noise ratios calculated as a function of the diagnostic design parameters. Combining the CXRS data from both the heating and the diagnostic neutral beams on ITER, information on fast ions with energies up to 1 MeV can be obtained for the parameters of the ITER core CXRS diagnostic design. To achieve this, energy binning of the signal is used (100 keV bins or larger), in order to improve the signal-to-noise ratio, with a time resolution of 2 s. The time resolution of the measurement can be improved using a higher throughput spectrometer, but this is ultimately limited by the amount of light from the neutral beam that can be collected. Despite the challenges and the fact that the results are not as optimistic as previously assumed, it is concluded that useful information on fast helium density profiles can be obtained using CXRS on ITER.

We describe the application of a simple spatial-heterodyne coherence-imaging filter for 2D Doppler imaging of charge exchange recombination (CXR) emission from a heating beam in the TEXTOR tokamak. Results obtained by the CXR imaging system are found to be consistent with measurements obtained using a standard multi-channel spectrometer-based system. We describe the system, indicate possible enhancements and future applications for imaging CXRS.

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Articles you may be interested inThe motional Stark effect (MSE) diagnostic is used to measure the radial magnetic pitch angle profile in neutral beam heated plasmas. This information is used to calculate the safety factor, q, with magnetic equilibrium reconstruction codes such as EFIT. The MSE diagnostic is important during active shaping of the q profile to optimize confinement and stability, and it has become a key diagnostic in high performance tokamaks. A multichord photo-elastic modulator (PEM) based MSE system is being developed for a real-time plasma current profile control in Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR). The PEM-based approach is a standard method that measures the polarization direction of a single Stark line with narrow tunable bandpass filters. A tangential view of the heating beam provides good spatial resolution of 1-3 cm, which provides an opportunity to install 25 spatial channels spanning the major radius from 1.74 m to 2.84 m. Application of real-time control is a long-term technical goal after commissioning the diagnostic in KSTAR, which is expected in 2015. In this paper, we describe the design of this newly-constructed multichord MSE diagnostic in KSTAR.

Contamination of optical signals by reflections from the tokamak vessel wall is a matter of great concern. For machines such as ITER and future reactors, where the vessel wall will be predominantly metallic, this is potentially a risk factor for quantitative optical emission spectroscopy. This is, in particular, the case when bremsstrahlung continuum radiation from the bulk plasma is used as a common reference light source for the cross-calibration of visible spectroscopy. In this paper the reflected contribution to the continuum level in Textor and ITER has been estimated for the detection channels meant for charge exchange recombination spectroscopy (CXRS). A model assuming diffuse reflection has been developed for the bremsstrahlung which is a much extended source. Based on this model, it is shown that in the case of ITER upper port 3, a wall with a moderate reflectivity of 20% leads to the wall reflected fraction being as high as 55-60% of the weak signals in the edge channels. In contrast, a complete bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) based model has been developed in order to estimate the reflections from more localized sources like the charge exchange (CX) emission from a neutral beam in tokamaks. The largest signal contamination of ∼15% is seen in the core CX channels, where the true CX signal level is much lower than that in the edge channels. Similar values are obtained for Textor also. These results indicate that the contributions from wall reflections may be large enough to significantly distort the overall spectral features of CX data, warranting an analysis at different wavelengths.

An analysis of the burn equilibria of fusion reactors of the tokamak family is presented. The global (zero-dimensional) analysis is self-consistent in that it takes into account the dependence of the energy confinement on the variables of the burning plasma, such as temperature and density. Universal burn contours are presented for a selection of commonly used scaling laws for energy confinement. It is shown that the output power of a fusion reactor is to good approximation inversely proportional to the particle confinement time, due to the choking effect of the accumulation of helium, the ash of the fusion reaction. It is further shown that, whereas a fusion reactor requires a minimum energy confinement time to ignite, the output power reaches a maximum for an energy confinement that lies about 30% above this minimum. Further improvement of confinement will lower the output, although in some cases the β limit will be the limiting factor. Given that for maximum performance density the confinement and fuel mix are best chosen to be optimal, the particle confinement is proposed as an attractive parameter for burn control.