Heat load estimation in the duct and blanket module region of the HNB during various operating scenarios of the ITER machine

Abstract

The neutral beam heating and current drive system in ITER consists of 3 beam lines (2 present plus one future upgrade) with each beam line designed to deliver 40 A of accelerated deuterium beams at 1 MeV with a 25% duty cycle. The beam line is coupled to the vacuum vessel port of the tokamak through a series of front end components and a connecting duct. The edge of the beam line and the walls of the vacuum vessel up to the blanket aperture are lined with duct liners to protect them from heat loads from the direct and re-ionised beam interception during the transport of the neutral beam. The direct interception of the beam is due to the inherent divergence of the beam or its halo component. The re-ionised beam consists of ions born due to the interaction of the accelerated neutral beam with the back ground gas all along the beam line, after the neutraliser exit. The motion of these ions is also affected by the electric field of the residual ion dump (RID) and the magnetic field from the tokamak during its various phases of operation. A systematic study to assess the heat loads during the neutral beam transport on the different front end components, the various regions of the duct and the blanket modules is necessary to ascertain the proper thermo-mechanical design of these components. The beam transmission code "BTR" has been used for that purpose. Simulations have been carried out of the gas profile along the neutral beam line considering gas flux from the ion source, the neutraliser, the RID (due to the dumped ion beams) and the flow of the gas from the tokamak to the duct. The re-ionisation losses have been estimated to be 13.8 % for the region between the exit of the neutraliser and the blanket module edge. The magnetic fields for the various operating scenarios of the tokamak like the start of the burn (SOB), end of burn (EOB), X point formation (XPF), XPF + 20 s, EOB + disruption have been simulated for the 15 MA DT scenario. The beamlet divergence has been considered to range between 3 - 7 mrad for the main beam component and 30 mrad for the halo fraction which has been taken as 15% of the main beam. The simulations have been performed for the neutral beam axis vertical inclination of 49 mrad with an additional 10 mrad vertical tilt, which is required for off-axis current drive and avoidance of beam excited toroidal Alvèn eigenmodes in the ITER plasma. The results of these simulations will be presented and discussed.