Simulation of DIII-D disruption with argon pellet injection and runaway electron beam

Journal Article · 08 October 2024 · Nuclear Fusion

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1741-4326/ad80ab · OSTI ID:2460578

Zhao, C. ; Liu, C. ; Jardin, S. C. ; Ferraro, N. M. ; Lyons, B. C.

Abstract The next generation of large tokamaks, including ITER, will be equipped with a disruption mitigation system (DMS) that can be activated if a disruption is deemed to be imminent. Introducing impurities by pellet (large or shattered) or massive gas injection has been shown to be an effective mitigation mechanism on many tokamaks. The goal of the mitigation is to lessen the thermal and electromagnetic loads from the disruption without generating enough high-energy (runaway) electrons to damage the device. Variations of this mitigation process with impurity injection are presently being tested on many experiments. We have modeled one such impurity injection experiment on DIII-D using the M3D-C1 nonlinear 3D extended MHD code (Jardin et al 2012 Comput. Sci. Discovery 6 014002), The model includes an argon large pellet injection and ablation model, impurity ionization, recombination, and radiation, and runaway electron formation and subsequent evolution, including both Dreicer and avalanche sources. We obtain reasonable agreement with the experimental results for the timescale of the thermal and current quench and for the magnitude of the runaway electron plateau formed during the mitigation. This is the first 3D full MHD simulation with pellets and REs to simulate the disruption process and it also provides a partial validation of the M3D-C1 DMS model.

• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• Grant/Contract Number: FC02-04ER54698
• OSTI ID: 2460578
• Journal Information: Nuclear Fusion, Journal Name: Nuclear Fusion Journal Issue: 12 Vol. 64; ISSN 0029-5515
• Publisher: IOP PublishingCopyright Statement
• Country of Publication: IAEA
• Language: English