Final Progress Report The U.S. Department of Energy Research Grant No. DE-SC0008660 Plasma Surface Interactions: Bridging from the Surface to the Micron Frontier through Leadership Class Computing
- Univ. of California, San Diego, CA (United States)
The choice of material for the plasma facing components (PFC), in particular, for divertor targets, is one of the main issues for future tokamak reactors. There are two major requirements for the PFC’s material: acceptable level of tritium retention and durability in a harsh environment of fusion grade plasma. Based on these criteria, some years ago it was decided that tungsten is an acceptable material for divertor targets in ITER. However, further experimental studies reveal that the irradiation of tungsten even with low energetic (well below sputtering threshold!) He containing plasma causes significant modification of surface morphology, formation of the layer of He nano-bubbles (in the temperature range T<1000 K), “fuzz” (for 1000 K<2000 K), and pinholes (for T>2000 K) (e.g. see Fig. 1). Recall that He, being an ash of D-T fusion reactions, is an inherent impurity in fusion plasma. The goals of the UCSD Applied Plasma Theory Group was: i) investigate the mechanisms of the formation of He nano-bubble layer and fuzz growth under He irradiation, as well as the physics of transport of hydrogen species in tungsten lattice, and ii) develop physics understanding of the models suitable for the incorporation into the Xolotl-PSI code based on the reaction-diffusion approach, which is the flagship of the whole SciDAC project [8], which can guide both numerical simulations and experimental studies. Here we just highlight our major accomplishments.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of California, San Diego, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- DOE Contract Number:
- SC0008660
- OSTI ID:
- 1413152
- Report Number(s):
- DE-SC0008660
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Plasma Surface Interactions: Bridging from the Surface to the Micron Frontier through Leadership Class Computing (Final Technical Progress Report)
Plasma Surface Interactions: Bridging from the Surface to the Micron Frontier through Leadership Class Computing (Final Technical Report)