Radiation Effects on the Components of Diagnostic Systems for a Thermonuclear Reactor: A Review

Abstract

The review is devoted to describing how irradiation with neutrons, fast particles, and γ rays affects components of the diagnostic equipment for a thermonuclear reactor. It is shown that the radiation environment inside a reactor and in the space around it has a significant (and sometimes crucial) effect on the diagnostic instruments. Unfortunately, the available data on radiation effects do not allow us to reliably estimate the resistance of a particular diagnostic component to radiation damage from neutrons, γ rays, and other particles. Specifically, the shortage of data on the effect of 14-MeV thermonuclear neutrons is a major problem. Therefore, the radiation testing of both the instruments' individual components of the instruments and diagnostic systems as a whole is in particular of paramount importance.

Diagnostics for steady state plasmas

“…The short introduction is based primarily on references [12,63,171] and references therein. Radiation effects are expected small under long pulse conditions in TS, LHD, KSTAR, and W7-X even under D-operation conditions, since the annual neutron budget is limited to about 10 19 neutrons.…”

“…It results in a volumetric heating of almost 10 MW m −3 accompanied by γ -radiation at a dose rate of 10 3 and 10 Gy s −1 , respectively, causing radio luminescence and modifications of in-vessel dielectric material [10]. CX-particle bombardment with fluxes of 10 17 to 10 18 per m 2 s causes surface modifications of plasma facing mirrors degrading their optical properties [60][61][62][63]. As mentioned in the introduction, the wide field of these radiation-induced effects will not be covered here.…”