Efforts Made to Handling Steady-State High Heat Flux in EAST

Abstract

There have been three generations divertor designed for EAST to handle steady-state high heat flux form plasma. The first generation divertor was used on the initial phase of the plasma burning. The first generation divertor was just stainless plate 5 mm in thickness bolted on supports which had been applied since 2006–2007. From 2008 to 2013 the second generation divertor has been used. The second generation divertor was graphite divertor that consisted of graphite tiles, heat sink (CuCrZr) and supports (316L). The third generation divertor was tungsten divertor with ITER like design that had been used science 2014. Now days the upper divertor is tungsten divertor (80 modules) and the lower divertor is graphite divertor (16 modules) in EAST. Tungsten divertor is able to withstand 10 MW/m2 heat flux on its strike point and graphite divertor can bear 2 MW/m2 under same conditions. It is very important to make every efforts to improve thermal extraction technology of divertor by comparing and practice different designs. Such efforts made in EAST can bring experiences and answers for ITER or any next divertor fusion device on nuclear phase.