Advances in experimental research towards high confinement and steady state operation on the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak

Abstract

The final goal of nuclear fusion science and technology research is to develop safe and clean fusion energy which can solve the human energy crisis ultimately. As construction started in the early of this century, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project has pushed the fusion energy development a big step forward toward commercial application. Those tokamaks which are ITER-like magnetic confinement fusion devices have focused their fusion energy research on high temperature plasma experiments at this stage. The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) was designed and constructed independently by Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. EAST has implemented lots of exploration and research on the key engineering and physical problems for fusion reactor. Especially in the aspect of high confinement and steady-state operation, EAST has made major experimental research progress, which is important to the commercial power generation of fusion reactors economically and practically. EAST device has achieved the 400 s long pulse plasma in low confinement mode in 2012, then in 2017 EAST refreshed the world record of high confinement mode plasma discharge operation time, and became the first tokamak device that has the capability of high confinement and steady-state operation with 100 s. Moreover, for the first time, EAST touched the longest time scale in the magnetically confined fusion plasma—particle equilibration time. In order to provide a good experimental platform for investigation of the first wall with high heat load, edge localized modes suppression and engineering and physical problems research towards the steady-state operation and control for future fusion reactor, a series of experiments were implemented on EAST, including tungsten-copper water cooled divertor, lithium first wall, current driving with radio frequency wave, projectile injection, precise magnetic surface configuration control, edge localized modes and high heat load mitigation, and a lot of valuable results have been obtained.