High pulse number transient heat loads on beryllium

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The experimental fusion reactor ITER will apply beryllium as first wall armor material. In present fusion experiments, e.g. ASDEX Upgrade, it has been detected that up to 25% of the plasma energy loss is deposited in non divertor regions during edge localized mode (ELM) events. Therefore, the impact of transient heating events on beryllium needs to be investigated to reliably predict the performance of the beryllium armor tiles under ITER operational conditions. In the present experiments, the electron beam facility JUDITH 2 was used to exert transient heat pulses with power densities of 0.14–1.0GWm−2, as they can be expected for mitigated Type 1 ELMs in ITER, pulse durations in the range of 0.08–1.0ms, and a number of pulses in the range of 103–107 on S-65 beryllium specimens that were brazed on an actively cooled copper structure. Thereby, a strong drop of the melting threshold was discovered from a heat flux factor FHF = 22–25MWm−2s0.5 for 102 pulses to FHF < 12MWm−2s0.5 for 103 pulses. However, a saturation of the thermally induced damage was observed for FHF ≤ 9MWm−2s0.5 after 105 pulses. This result indicated a promising performance of beryllium under a high number of transient heat pulses in ITER. Nevertheless, the synergistic effects between thermal loads, particle loads, and neutron irradiation might affect the saturation threshold and need to be investigated in future studies.