The real mission of ITER
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
For future machines, the plasma stored energy is going up by factors of 20-40x, and plasma currents by 2-3x, while the surface to volume ratio is at the same time decreasing. Therefore the disruption forces, even for constant B, (which scale like IxB), and associated possible localized heating on machine components, are more severe. Notably, Tore Supra has demonstrated removal of more than 1 GJ of input energy, over nearly a 400 second period. However, the instantaneous stored energy in the Tore Supra system (which is most directly related to the potential for disruption damage) is quite small compared to other large tokamaks. The goal of ITER is routinely described as studying DT burning plasmas with a Q {approx} 10. In reality, ITER has a much more important first order mission. In fact, if it fails at this mission, the consequences are that ITER will never get to the eventual stated purpose of studying a burning plasma. The real mission of ITER is to study (and demonstrate successfully) plasma control with {approx}10-17 MA toroidal currents and {approx}100-400 MJ plasma stored energy levels in long-pulse scenarios. Before DT operation is ever given a go-ahead in ITER, the reality is that ITER must demonstrate routine and reliable control of high energy hydrogen (and deuterium) plasmas. The difficulty is that ITER must simultaneously deal with several technical problems: (1) heat removal at the plasma/wall interface, (2) protection of the wall components from off-normal events, and (3) generation of dust/redeposition of first wall materials. All previous tokamaks have encountered hundred's of major disruptions in the course of their operation. The consequences of a few MA of runaway electrons (at 20-50 MeV) being generated in ITER, and then being lost to the walls are simply catastrophic. They will not be deposited globally, but will drift out (up, down, whatever, depending on control system), and impact internal structures, unless 'ameliorated'. Basically, this represents an extraordinarily robust e-beam welding machine, capable of deep penetration into any armor tiles, to the cooling channels which are embedded less than 1 cm below the tile surface. When energy is deposited in a fraction of a second on (or in) a tile, the presence of underlying water cooling does no good for the purposes of heat removal.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396
- OSTI ID:
- 962291
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-09-01246; LA-UR-09-1246; TRN: US200919%%55
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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