Linear stability of toroidal Alfvén eigenmodes in the Chinese Fusion Engineering Test Reactor

Abstract

The Chinese Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR) is under design. It aims to fill the gaps between ITER and DEMO. In the reactor, the deuterium-tritium fusion reaction and the auxiliary heating will generate a lot of energetic particles. It is possible that these energetic particles will drive toroidal Alfvén eigenmode (TAE) instabilities under the conditions of CFETR plasma parameters. These instabilities can result in energetic particles redistribution or loss, so it’s vital to study TAE instabilities in CFETR. The aim of this paper is to study the possibility of reducing TAE instabilities by changing safety factor profiles in CFETR. NOVA and NOVA-K codes are used to study TAE stability. The equilibria are constructed using the CORSICA code. Safety factor profiles are selected as the three typical profiles of ITER scenarios. For the three different safety factor profiles, we use NOVA to scan and calculate their continuum spectrum and eigenmode structures, then use NOVA-K to calculate the different damping and driving mechanisms for different toroidal mode numbers. The numerical calculations show that if the safety factor profiles are chosen appropriately, then all the TAEs can be stable. Thus, it’s possible to reduce the TAE instabilities by changing safety factor profiles in CFETR. We also scan the temperature and density profiles to see their effects on the TAE instabilities. It shows that the TAE instabilities keep unchanged for a wide range of profiles.