Impacts of pellets injected from the low-field side on plasma in ITER

Abstract

Impacts of pellets injected from the low-field side (LFS) on plasma in ITER are investigated using the 1.5D BALDUR integrated predictive modeling code. In these simulations, the pellet ablation is described using the neutral gas shielding (NGS) model. The pellet ablation model is coupled with the plasma core transport model, which is a combination of the MMM95 anomalous transport model and NCLASS neoclassical transport model. The boundary conditions are assumed to be at the top of the pedestal, in which the pedestal parameters are predicted using a pedestal model based on the theoretical-based pedestal width scaling (either magnetic and flow shear stabilization width scaling, or flow shear stabilization width scaling, or normalized poloidal pressure width scaling) and the infinite-n ballooning mode pressure gradient limit. These pedestal models depend sensitively on the density at the top of the pedestal, which can be strongly influenced by the injection of pellets. The combination of the MMM95 and NCLASS models, together with the pedestal and NGS models, is used to simulate the time evolution of the plasma current, ion and electron temperatures, and density profiles for ITER standard type-I ELMy H-mode discharges during the injection of LFS pellets. It is found that the injection of pellets results in a complicated plasma scenario, especially in the outer region of the plasma and the plasma conditions at the boundary in which the pellet has an impact on increasing the plasma edge density, but reducing the plasma edge temperature. The LFS pellet has a stronger impact on the edge as compared to the center. For fusion performance, the pellet can result in either enhancement or degradation, depending sensitively on the pellet parameters; such as the pellet size, pellet velocity, and pellet frequency. For example, when a series of deuterium pellets with a size of 0.5 cm, velocity of 1 km/s, and frequency of 2 Hz are injected into the ITER plasma from the LFS, the plasma performance, evaluated in terms of Q fusion, can increase to 72% of that before the use of pellets. It is also found that the injection of pellets results in an increase in the ion and electron densities, but does not enhance the central plasma density. On the other hand, it results in the formation of another peak of the plasma density in the outer region near the plasma edge. The formation of the density peak results in the reduction of plasma transports near the edge by decreasing the contributions of ion-temperature-gradient and trapped electron modes, as well as kinetic ballooning modes.