Abstract
The international thermonuclear experimental reactor (ITER) is a worldwide project currently being built in France for the demonstration of the feasibility of thermonuclear technologies for future realization of successful commercial fusion energy. ITER is of the tokamak based design using strong magnetic fields to confine the very hot plasma needed to induce the fusion reaction. Tokamak devices are currently the front leading designs. Building a successful magnetic fusion device for energy production is of great challenge. A key obstacle to such design is the performance during abnormal events including plasma disruptions and so-called edge-localized modes (ELMs). In these events, a massive and sudden release of energy occurs quickly, due to loss of full or partial plasma confinement, leading to very high transient power loads on the reactor surface boundaries. A successful reactor design should tolerate several of these transient events without serious damages such as melting and vaporization of the structure. This paper highlights, through comprehensive state-of-the-art computer simulation of the entire ITER interior design during such transient events, e.g., ELMs occurring at normal operation and disruptions during abnormal operation, potential serious problems with current plasma facing components (PFCs) design. The HEIGHTS computer package is used in these simulations. The ITER reactor design was simulated in full and exact 3D geometry including all known relevant physical processes involved during these transient events. The current ITER divertor design may not work properly and may requires significant modifications or new innovative design to prevent serious damage and to ensure successful operation.
Highlights
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is currently being built in France to produce, for the first time, a fusion power of about 500 megawatts thermal output power, i.e., a gain of ten times more than the input power of about 50 megawatts of thermal power needed to demonstrate the fact of producing more thermal power from the fusion process than is used to heat the plasma
HEIGHTS integrated simulation can predict at any point inside the entire international thermonuclear experimental reactor (ITER) 3D geometry all incident particles and calculate the energy fluxes from both the escaped core plasma and from the re-radiated photons emitted from the secondary plasma
A serious concern to any successful concept for energy production in magnetic fusion reactors is their performance during abnormal events including plasma disruptions due to loss of plasma confinement and edgelocalized modes (ELMs) during normal operation
Summary
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is currently being built in France to produce, for the first time, a fusion power of about 500 megawatts thermal output power, i.e., a gain of ten times more than the input power of about 50 megawatts of thermal power needed to demonstrate the fact of producing more thermal power from the fusion process than is used to heat the plasma. There are two possible ways to increase the wetting area and reduce the heat load: (i) by optimization of the divertor magnetic configuration and components design; or (ii) by establishing a buffer zone between the escaped core plasma and SP to dissipate the heat load in current tokamak designs. Successful design of fusion reactors will critically depend on the accurate prediction of all the heat and particle loads incident on various interior reactor components to correctly identify the optimum materials for PFCs. The loss of core plasma particles confinement are a serious concern to the lifetime of the divertor plate and surrounding components and a potential source for immediate and subsequent core plasma contamination from the eroded/ splashed materials from damaged components
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