Net erosion measurements on plasma facing components of Tore Supra

Abstract

Erosion of the plasma facing components is a crucial point of investigation in long pulse operation of future fusion devices. Therefore erosion measurements have been undertaken in the Tore Supra tokamak. After each experimental campaign, different plasma facing components have been monitored in situ by non-destructive means, in order to evaluate their net erosion following a long plasma exposure. This paper presents the results obtained over three experimental campaigns on the Tore Supra ergodic divertor B 4C-coated neutralisers and CFC Langmuir probes. The erosion on the Langmuir probes after one year of plasma exposure can reach 100 μm, leading to an effective erosion coefficient of around 5×10 −3 to 10 −2, in reasonable agreement with values found on other tokamaks. The erosion of the ergodic divertor neutraliser plates is lower (10 μm). This is coherent with the attenuated particle flux due to a lower incidence angle, and might also be due to some surface temperature effect, since the neutralisers are actively cooled while the Langmuir probes are not. Moreover, the profile along the neutraliser shows net erosion in zones wetted by the plasma and net redeposition in shadowed zones.