Impurity transport simulation in the peripheral plasma in the large helical device with tungsten closed helical divertor

Abstract

Long pulse plasma discharges in the Large Helical Device have been often interrupted by iron dust emission induced by electric arcing on the surface of the vacuum vessel. The iron ions in the peripheral plasma induced by the dust emission enhance physical sputtering and self-sputtering on the divertor plates, which can interrupt the long pulse plasma discharges by radiation collapse. The impurity transport simulation for a tungsten divertor configuration is performed using a three-dimensional edge plasma simulation code (EMC3-EIRENE) under the condition where the iron ions produced by the dust emission cause the sputtering on the tungsten divertor plates. The simulation shows that the sputtered tungsten significantly increases the radiation power by a factor of about 20 compared to that for the carbon divertor configuration in a high plasma temperature condition. The simulation reveals that plasma discharge operation with a high plasma density is desirable for the tungsten divertor. In this operational regime, the radiation power by tungsten ions is significantly reduced by the combined effect of the suppression of the sputtered tungsten and the control of the tungsten ion accumulation by the reduced thermal force in the peripheral plasma. Keywords: Tungsten, EMC3-EIRENE, Long pulse discharge, Sputtering, Dust