Progress of DTT ECRH system design

Abstract

The Divertor Tokamak Test (DTT) facility [1], whose construction is starting, will study a suitable solution for the power exhaust in conditions relevant for the future fusion device DEMO. DTT can achieve the value of 15 MW/m for the divertor figure of merit PSEP/R by employing 45 MW of auxiliary heating power to the plasma. To achieve this goal, the selected heating systems are Electron Cyclotron Resonance Heating (ECRH), Ion Cyclotron Resonance Heating (ICRH) and Negative (ion based) Neutral Beam Injector (NNBI).The ECRH system relies on up to 32 gyrotrons (operating each at 170 GHz to supply from a minimum of 1MW to a maximum of 1.2 MW for 100 s), a Quasi Optical (QO) transmission line (TL), consisting of multi-beam mirrors installed under vacuum to reduce the overall transmission losses below the target of 10% and independent (single-beam) front-steering mirrors capable to direct the beams individually in real-time for assisted plasma breakdown, control of neoclassical tearing modes and sawtooth, ECCD and main electron heating. Although the ECRH system design presented here will be based mainly on existing and assessed technologies, like the 170 GHz gyrotron type developed for ITER and the QO TL installed at W7-X, challenging adaptations to the DTT case have to be made. In particular, the design of a QO TL under vacuum is novel and needs detailed analysis of the stray radiation along the line in order to set the requirements for the mirror dimensions and/or the cooling of the vacuum chamber that encloses the mirrors. A further relevant question is the reliability of the ECRH system: the development of automatic algorithms to control such a large number of gyrotrons is foreseen to provide the required amount and distribution of power into the plasma.