Nuclear Fusion (Jan 2024)
Calorimetry measurement for energy balance and energy distribution in WEST for L-mode plasmas
Abstract
This paper presents the energy balance of 602 pulses from four different experimental campaigns for the WEST tokamak. Different magnetic configurations have been studied, with lower single null (LSN) and upper single null (USN) configuration with deuterium or helium plasmas. The energy balance is closed with an imbalance of about 5% of the total injected energy for most of the campaigns and for different magnetic configurations. The distribution over the whole machine is shown, with the outer first wall receiving most of the energy due to its large surface area with about 30% of the total heat load, and the divertor with 25% due to the heat loads deposited by the convected power in the scrape-off layer (SOL). Finally, the tomography inversion of the bolometry measurement allows us to disentangle the contribution of the radiated and convected power in the energy absorbed by each type of plasma-facing component. We show that in the USN configuration about 63% of the available energy in the SOL is deposited in the upper divertor (UDIV) through convected heat loads, while in LSN this value is spread over the lower divertor with 45% and the baffle and UDIV with about 10% for both.
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