Active control over carbon deposition on diagnostic components and in remote areas of ITER

Abstract

In future fusion devices like ITER deposition of impurities will likely occur in areas, remote from plasma and on the sensitive components of optical diagnostics, like mirrors and windows. Deposition in remote areas may lead to the tritium retention and therefore represent a safety issue. Deposition on optical components will severely deteriorate their optical properties potentially leading to the shutdown of the respective diagnostic systems. An active control over deposition is therefore highly desirable. The paper contains an overview of experiments on active control over carbon deposition undertaken in TEXTOR tokamak. A prototype of diagnostic duct was exposed in the scrape-off layer plasmas of TEXTOR where several techniques were applied to mitigate carbon deposition on diagnostic mirrors located inside this prototype. The complete suppression of carbon deposition on the surface of diagnostic mirror was achieved by feeding the deuterium gas inside the diagnostic duct.