Physics Design of the National High-Power Advanced Torus eXperiment
Moving beyond ITER toward a demonstration power reactor (Demo) will require the integration of stable high fusion gain in steady-state, advanced methods for dissipating very high divertor heat-fluxes, and adherence to strict limits on in-vessel tritium retention. While ITER will clearly address the issue of high fusion gain, and new and planned long-pulse experiments (EAST, JT60-SA, KSTAR, SST-1) will collectively address stable steady-state high-performance operation, none of these devices will adequately address the integrated heat-flux, tritium retention, and plasma performance requirements needed for extrapolation to Demo. Expressing power exhaust requirements in terms of P{sub heat}/R, future ARIES reactors are projected to operate with 60-200MW/m, a Component Test Facility (CTF) or Fusion Development Facility (FDF) for nuclear component testing (NCT) with 40-50MW/m, and ITER 20-25MW/m. However, new and planned long-pulse experiments are currently projected to operate at values of P{sub heat}/R no more than 16MW/m. Furthermore, none of the existing or planned experiments are capable of operating with very high temperature first-wall (T{sub wall} = 600-1000C) which may be critical for understanding and ultimately minimizing tritium retention with a reactor-relevant metallic first-wall. The considerable gap between present and near-term experiments and the performance needed for NCT and Demo motivates the development of the concept for a new experiment--the National High-power advanced-Torus eXperiment (NHTX)--whose mission is to study the integration of a fusion-relevant plasma-material interface with stable steady-state high-performance plasma operation. Such a device would not have a high-fluence NCT mission, but would advance the science and technology necessary to accelerate the NCT mission at reduced risk in a separate nuclear facility. For the NHTX mission, flexibility to test multiple divertor configurations and first-wall components is critical, and flexibility in plasma exhaust configuration and boundary shape is important for understanding the plasma-wall interaction. Sufficient profile control must be available to generate high-performance fully non-inductive plasmas with high P{sub heat}/R {le} 50MW/m and long pulses=200-1000s. Incorporation of hot walls, trace-tritium, liquid metals, and ELM and disruption control are additional design goals.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 920879
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-CONF-232418; TRN: US0802039
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Presented at: 34th EPS Conference on Plasma Physics, Warsaw, Poland, Jul 02 - Jul 06, 2007
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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