A new scaling for divertor detachment
The ITER design, and future reactor designs, depend on divertor `detachment,'whether partial, pronounced or complete, to limit heat flux to plasma-facing components and to limit surface erosion due to sputtering. It would be valuable to have a measure of the difficulty of achieving detachment as a function of machine parameters, such as input power, magnetic field, major radius, etc. Frequently the parallel heat flux, estimated typically as proportional to P-sep/R or PsepB/R, is used as a proxy for this difficulty. Here we argue that impurity cooling is dependent on the upstream density, which itself must be limited by a Greenwald-like scaling. Taking this into account self-consistently, we find the impurity fraction required for detachment scales dominantly as power divided by poloidal magnetic field. The absence of any explicit scaling with machine size is concerning, as P-sep surely must increase greatly for an economic fusion system, while increases in the poloidal field strength are limited by coil technology and plasma physics. This result should be challenged by comparison with 2D divertor codes and with measurements on existing experiments. Nonetheless, it suggests that higher magnetic field, stronger shaping, double-null operation, `advanced' divertor configurations, as well as alternate means to handle heat fluxmore »
- Authors:
-
[1]
; [2]
; [1]
- Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Publication Date:
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-09CH11466; AC05-00OR22725
- Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 59; Journal Issue: 5; Journal ID: ISSN 0741-3335
- Publisher:
- IOP Science
- Research Org:
- Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
- Sponsoring Org:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) (SC-24)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY; Divertor; Detachment; Radiation; Impurities
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1353398
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript (DOE)
- Publisher's Version of Record
- https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6587/aa5e6e