Nuclear Materials and Energy (Mar 2021)
Sustained radiative divertor in high-performance grassy-ELM regime with metal wall towards long-pulse operation in EAST
Abstract
Simultaneous control of transient heat load induced by large-amplitude edge-localized modes (ELMs) and steady-state heat load on divertor targets under metal wall environment is crucial for steady-state operation of future tokamak fusion reactors, such as ITER and the China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR). In the recent experiments, sustained partial energy detachment without confinement degradation has been achieved in the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) in high-performance grassy-ELM H-mode with q95 ~ 5.9 by a newly developed detachment feedback control scheme, in which we first used electron temperature (Tet) measured by divertor Langmuir probes to identify the onset of energy detachment, and then the system switched to the feedback control of total radiation power measured by absolute extreme ultraviolet (AXUV) system. Tet around the upper outer strike point was successfully maintained less than 8 eV with seeding of 80% Ne and 20% D2 mixture from upper outer divertor, and the total radiation power was maintained ~1.4 MW, around 52% of injected power. There was no significant decrease of the plasma stored energy and H98,y2 factor (~1) over the entire detachment feedback control process. These experiment results demonstrate good compatibility of the high-performance grassy-ELM regime with radiative divertor. In order to confirm the compatibility in a wider range, stable partial energy detachment in grassy-ELM H-mode with relatively lower q95 (~5.4) was also achieved in EAST through the newly developed integrated-feedback-control technique. The new detachment feedback control without confinement degradation in grassy-ELM H-mode provides a candidate mode for EAST long-pulse operation in the future with well control of ELM-induced transient and steady heat fluxes on the divertor target.
