Overview of material migration and mixing, fuel retention and cleaning of ITER-like castellated structures in TEXTOR

Abstract

Plasma-facing components (PFCs) in ITER will be castellated by splitting them into small-size blocks to maintain the thermo-mechanical stability. However, there are concerns in particular on retention of codeposited radioactive fuel in the gaps. An R&D program is underway in TEXTOR addressing this acute issue of castellation. Material migration and fuel inventory are investigated using long- and short-term discharge-resolved experiments with castellated structures in TEXTOR. Significant impurity transport to the gaps was detected and results were in part quantitatively reproduced with 3D-GAPS code.Deposits containing up to 70at.% of tungsten on the gap areas closest to the plasma were detected in recent experiments. Deposition in the gaps accompanied by metal mixing demand for development of effective cleaning techniques. In experiments with ITER-like castellation, the gaps were cleaned from carbonaceous deposits using oxygen plasmas at 350°C. This contribution contains an overview of experimental and modeling results along with recommendations for PFCs in ITER.