| 1. |
- Andersson Sundén, Erik, et al.
(author)
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An assessment of nitrogen concentrations from spectroscopic measurements in the JET and ASDEX upgrade divertor
- 2019
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In: Nuclear Materials and Energy. - : Elsevier. - 2352-1791. ; 18, s. 147-152
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The impurity concentration in the tokamak divertor plasma is a necessary input for predictive scaling of divertor detachment, however direct measurements from existing tokamaks in different divertor plasma conditions are limited. To address this, we have applied a recently developed spectroscopic N II line ratio technique for measuring the N concentration in the divertor to a range of H-mode and L-mode plasma from the ASDEX Upgrade and JET tokamaks, respectively. The results from both devices show that as the power crossing the separatrix, P-sep, is increased under otherwise similar core conditions (e.g. density), a higher N concentration is required to achieve the same detachment state. For example, the N concentrations at the start of detachment increase from approximate to 2% to approximate to 9% as P-sep, is increased from approximate to 2.5 MW to approximate to 7 MW. These results tentatively agree with scaling law predictions (e.g. Goldston et al.) motivating a further study examining the parameters which affect the N concentration required to reach detachment. Finally, the N concentrations from spectroscopy and the ratio of D and N gas valve fluxes agree within experimental uncertainty only when the vessel surfaces are fully-loaded with N.
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| 2. |
- Angioni, C., et al.
(author)
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Dependence of the turbulent particle flux on hydrogen isotopes induced by collisionality
- 2018
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In: Physics of Plasmas. - : American Institute of Physics (AIP). - 1070-664X .- 1089-7674 .- 1070-6631 .- 1089-7666. ; 25:8
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The impact of the change of the mass of hydrogen isotopes on the turbulent particle flux is studied. The trapped electron component of the turbulent particle convection induced by collisionality, which is outward in ion temperature gradient turbulence, increases with decreasing thermal velocity of the isotope. Thereby, the lighter is the isotope, the stronger is the turbulent pinch, and the larger is the predicted density gradient at the null of the particle flux. The passing particle component of the flux increases with decreasing mass of the isotope and can also affect the predicted density gradient. This effect is however subdominant for usual core plasma parameters. The analytical results are confirmed by means of both quasi-linear and nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations, and an estimate of the difference in local density gradient produced by this effect as a function of collisionality has been obtained for typical plasma parameters at mid-radius. Analysis of currently available experimental data from the JET and the ASDEX Upgrade tokamaks does not show any clear and general evidence of inconsistency with this theoretically predicted effect outside the errorbars and also allows the identification of cases providing weak evidence of qualitative consistency.
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| 3. |
- Bobkov, V, et al.
(author)
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Impact of ICRF on the scrape-off layer and on plasma wall interactions : From present experiments to fusion reactor
- 2019
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In: Nuclear Materials and Energy. - : Elsevier. - 2352-1791. ; 18, s. 131-140
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Recent achievements in studies of the effects of ICRF (Ion Cyclotron Range of Frequencies) power on the SOL (Scrape-Off Layer) and PWI (Plasma Wall Interactions) in ASDEX Upgrade (AUG), Alcator C-Mod, and JET-ILW are reviewed. Capabilities to diagnose and model the effect of DC biasing and associated impurity production at active antennas and on magnetic field connections to antennas are described. The experiments show that ICRF near-fields can lead not only to E x B convection, but also to modifications of the SOL density, which for Alcator C-Mod are limited to a narrow region near antenna. On the other hand, the SOL density distribution along with impurity sources can be tailored using local gas injection in AUG and JET-ILW with a positive effect on reduction of impurity sources. The technique of RF image current cancellation at antenna limiters was successfully applied in AUG using the 3-strap AUG antenna and extended to the 4-strap Alcator C-Mod field-aligned antenna. Multiple observations confirmed the reduction of the impact of ICRF on the SOL and on total impurity production when the ratio of the power of the central straps to the total antenna power is in the range 0.6 < P-cen / P-total < 0.8. Near-field calculations indicate that this fairly robust technique can be applied to the ITER ICRF antenna, enabling the mode of operation with reduced PWI. On the contrary, for the A2 antenna in JET-ILW the technique is hindered by RF sheaths excited at the antenna septum. Thus, in order to reduce the effect of ICRF power on PWI in a future fusion reactor, the antenna design has to be optimized along with design of plasmafacing components.
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| 4. |
- Bravenec, R., et al.
(author)
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Benchmarking the GENE and GYRO codes through the relative roles of electromagnetic and E x B stabilization in JET high-performance discharges
- 2016
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In: Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion. - : Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP). - 0741-3335 .- 1361-6587. ; 58:12
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations using the GENE code have previously predicted a significant nonlinear enhanced electromagnetic stabilization in certain JET discharges with high neutral-beam power and low core magnetic shear (Citrin et al 2013 Phys. Rev. Lett. 111 155001, 2015 Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 57 014032). This dominates over the impact of E x B flow shear in these discharges. Furthermore, fast ions were shown to be a major contributor to the electromagnetic stabilization. These conclusions were based on results from the GENE gyrokinetic turbulence code. In this work we verify these results using the GYRO code. Comparing results (linear frequencies, eigenfunctions, and nonlinear fluxes) from different gyrokinetic codes as a means of verification (benchmarking) is only convincing if the codes agree for more than one discharge. Otherwise, agreement may simply be fortuitous. Therefore, we analyze three discharges, all with a carbon wall: a simplified, two-species, circular geometry case based on an actual JET discharge; an L-mode discharge with a significant fast-ion pressure fraction; and a low-triangularity high-beta hybrid discharge. All discharges were analyzed at normalized toroidal flux coordinate rho = 0.33 where significant ion temperature peaking is observed. The GYRO simulations support the conclusion that electromagnetic stabilization is strong, and dominates E x B shear stabilization.
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| 5. |
- Chankin, A. , V, et al.
(author)
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EDGE2D-EIRENE simulations of the influence of isotope effects and anomalous transport coefficients on near scrape-off layer radial electric field
- 2019
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In: Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion. - : Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP). - 0741-3335 .- 1361-6587. ; 61:7
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- EDGE2D-EIRENE (the 'code') simulations show that radial electric field, Er, in the near scrape-off layer (SOL) of tokamaks can have large variations leading to a strong local E x B shear greatly exceeding that in the core region. This was pointed out in simulations of JET plasmas with varying divertor geometry, where the magnetic configuration with larger predicted near SOL E-r was found to have lower H-mode power threshold, suggesting that turbulence suppression in the SOL by local E. x. B shear can be a player in the L-H transition physics (Delabie et al 2015 42nd EPS Conf. on Plasma Physics (Lisbon, Portugal, 22-26 June 2015) paper O3.113 (http://ocs.ciemat.es/EPS2015PAP/pdf/O3.113.pdf), Chankin et al 2017 Nucl. Mater. Energy 12 273). Further code modeling of JET plasmas by changing hydrogen isotopes (H-D-T) showed that the magnitude of the near SOL E-r is lower in H cases in which the H-mode threshold power is higher (Chankin et al 2017 Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 59 045012). From the experiment it is also known that hydrogen plasmas have poorer particle and energy confinement than deuterium plasmas, consistent with the code simulation results showing larger particle diffusion coefficients at the plasma edge, including SOL, in hydrogen plasmas (Maggi et al 2018 Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 60 014045). All these experimental observations and code results support the hypothesis that the near SOL E x B shear can have an impact on the plasma confinement. The present work analyzes neutral ionization patterns of JET plasmas with different hydrogen isotopes in L-mode cases with fixed input power and gas puffing rate, and its impact on target electron temperature, T-e, and SOL E-r. The possibility of a self-feeding mechanism for the increase in the SOL E-r via the interplay between poloidal E x B drift and target T-e is discussed. It is also shown that reducing anomalous turbulent transport coefficients, particle diffusion and electron and ion heat conductivities, leads to higher peak target T-e and larger E-r, suggesting the possibility of a positive feedback loop, under an implicitly made assumption that the E x B shear in the SOL is capable of suppressing turbulence.
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| 6. |
- Craciunescu, Teddy, et al.
(author)
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Evaluation of reconstruction errors and identification of artefacts for JET gamma and neutron tomography
- 2016
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In: Review of Scientific Instruments. - : American Institute of Physics (AIP). - 0034-6748 .- 1089-7623. ; 87:1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Joint European Torus (JET) neutron profile monitor ensures 2D coverage of the gamma and neutron emissive region that enables tomographic reconstruction. Due to the availability of only two projection angles and to the coarse sampling, tomographic inversion is a limited data set problem. Several techniques have been developed for tomographic reconstruction of the 2-D gamma and neutron emissivity on JET, but the problem of evaluating the errors associated with the reconstructed emissivity profile is still open. The reconstruction technique based on the maximum likelihood principle, that proved already to be a powerful tool for JET tomography, has been used to develop a method for the numerical evaluation of the statistical properties of the uncertainties in gamma and neutron emissivity reconstructions. The image covariance calculation takes into account the additional techniques introduced in the reconstruction process for tackling with the limited data set (projection resampling, smoothness regularization depending on magnetic field). The method has been validated by numerically simulations and applied to JET data. Different sources of artefacts that may significantly influence the quality of reconstructions and the accuracy of variance calculation have been identified.
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| 7. |
- Denis, J., et al.
(author)
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Dynamic modelling of local fuel inventory and desorption in the whole tokamak vacuum vessel for auto-consistent plasma-wall interaction simulations
- 2019
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In: Nuclear Materials and Energy. - : Elsevier. - 2352-1791. ; 19, s. 550-557
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- An extension of the SolEdge2D-EIRENE code package, named D-WEE, has been developed to add the dynamics of thermal desorption of hydrogen isotopes from the surface of plasma facing materials. To achieve this purpose, D-WEE models hydrogen isotopes implantation, transport and retention in those materials. Before launching autoconsistent simulation (with feedback of D-WEE on SolEdge2D-EIRENE), D-WEE has to be initialised to ensure a realistic wall behaviour in terms of dynamics (pumping or fuelling areas) and fuel content. A methodology based on modelling is introduced to perform such initialisation. A synthetic plasma pulse is built from consecutive SolEdge2D-EIRENE simulations. This synthetic pulse is used as a plasma background for the D-WEE module. A sequence of plasma pulses is simulated with D-WEE to model a tokamak operation. This simulation enables to extract at a desired time during a pulse the local fuel inventory and the local desorption flux density which could be used as initial condition for coupled plasma-wall simulations. To assess the relevance of the dynamic retention behaviour obtained in the simulation, a confrontation to post-pulse experimental pressure measurement is performed. Such confrontation reveals a qualitative agreement between the temporal pressure drop obtained in the simulation and the one observed experimentally. The simulated dynamic retention during the consecutive pulses is also studied.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Kirschner, A., et al.
(author)
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Modelling of tungsten erosion and deposition in the divertor of JET-ILW in comparison to experimental findings
- 2019
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In: Nuclear Materials and Energy. - : Elsevier. - 2352-1791. ; 18, s. 239-244
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The erosion, transport and deposition of tungsten in the outer divertor of JET-ILW has been studied for an H-Mode discharge with low frequency ELMs. For this specific case with an inter-ELM electron temperature at the strike point of about 20 eV, tungsten sputtering between ELMs is almost exclusively due to beryllium impurity and self-sputtering. However, during ELMs tungsten sputtering due to deuterium becomes important and even dominates. The amount of simulated local deposition of tungsten relative to the amount of sputtered tungsten in between ELMs is very high and reaches values of 99% for an electron density of 5E13 cm(-3) at the strike point and electron temperatures between 10 and 30 eV. Smaller deposition values are simulated with reduced electron density. The direction of the B-field significantly influences the local deposition and leads to a reduction if the E x B drift directs towards the scrape-off-layer. Also, the thermal force can reduce the tungsten deposition, however, an ion temperature gradient of about 0.1 eV/mm or larger is needed for a significant effect. The tungsten deposition simulated during ELMs reaches values of about 98% assuming ELM parameters according to free-streaming model. The measured WI emission profiles in between and within ELMs have been reproduced by the simulation. The contribution to the overall net tungsten erosion during ELMs is about 5 times larger than the one in between ELMs for the studied case. However, this is due to the rather low electron temperature in between ELMs, which leads to deuterium impact energies below the sputtering threshold for tungsten.
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| 10. |
- Kotschenreuther, M., et al.
(author)
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Gyrokinetic analysis and simulation of pedestals to identify the culprits for energy losses using 'fingerprints'
- 2019
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In: Nuclear Fusion. - : Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP). - 0029-5515 .- 1741-4326. ; 59:9
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Fusion performance in tokamaks hinges critically on the efficacy of the edge transport barrier (ETB) in suppressing energy losses. The new concept of 'fingerprints' is introduced to identify the instabilities that cause transport losses in the ETBs of many of today's experiments, from among widely posited candidates. Analysis of the gyrokinetic-Maxwell equations and gyrokinetic simulations of experiments reveals that each mode type produces characteristic ratios of transport in the various channels: density, heat, and impurities. This, together with experimental observations of transport in some channel or of the relative size of the driving sources of channels, can identify or determine the dominant modes causing energy transport. In multiple H-mode cases with edge-localized modes that are examined, these fingerprints indicate that magnetohydrodynamic (MHD)-like modes are apparently not the dominant agent of energy transport; rather, this role is played by micro-tearing modes (MTMs) and electron temperature gradient (ETG) modes, and in addition, possibly by ion temperature gradient/ trapped electron modes (ITG/TEM) on JET (Joint European 'Torus). MHD-like modes may dominate the electron particle losses. Fluctuation frequency can also be an important means of identification, and is often closely related to the transport fingerprint. The analytical arguments unify and explain previously disparate experimental observations on multiple devices, including DIII-D, JET, and ASDEX-U. Detailed simulations of two DIII-D ETBs also demonstrate and corroborate this.
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