Power balance investigation in long-pulse high-performance discharges with ITER-like tungsten divertor on EAST

Abstract

The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) research program concentrates on demonstrating steady-state high-performance H-mode operations with ITER-like tungsten divertor. Calorimetry was applied to actively water-cool the plasma facing components (PFCs) by increasing the water temperature for power balance investigation. Considering the energy balance of EAST long-pulse high-performance discharges with upper single null (USN) configuration, thus far, approximately 78% of the injected energy could be accounted for. The method of estimation of heat flux on upper tungsten divertor target with a high time- and spatial-resolved infrared camera has been developed, and the sum of its heat load was found to be significantly consistent with that measured through calorimetry. The record longest steady-state H-mode plasma #73 999 was sustained for up to 101.2 s with net injected energy exceeding ∼0.25 GJ in the USN configuration. Heat load analysis of this discharge using calorimetric measurement indicates that the modification of heat load distribution was observed and this was induced by a slight change in the magnetic configuration. Not all temperature increments in the five cooling water modules reached the saturated state for the 100 s level discharge, which means that 100 s timescales are insufficient as compared to the thermal transport timescale in the targeted PFCs. The heat load on the tungsten divertor targets is not evenly distributed with the ratio of ∼2 in favour of the outer divertor.The experimental results and analysis of the physics involved in these USN configuration discharges are reported and discussed.