Abstract
Abstract Recent research has been down on the removal of retained fuel particles from the first wall surfaces of the EAST superconducting tokamak, by using direct-current glow discharge cleaning (DC-GDC) under a strong magnetic field. The findings from these experiments reveal that GDC is highly effective in strong magnetic fields, boasting a significant fuel removal rate despite the plasma is strongly confined by the magnetic field. The cleaning process primarily targets the side portion of the limiter adjacent to the GDC anodes on the low field side via thermal desorption to access areas that are typically inaccessible to other plasma types. Additionally, it was noted that pulsed GDC is less effective in comparison to continuous GDC operation under intense magnetic field conditions. The efficiency of pulsed GDC mainly depends on the GDC duty cycle, which further suggests that thermal desorption is the predominant cleaning mechanism in such a strong magnetic environment. The integration of ion cyclotron wall conditioning (ICWC) with GDC in a pulsed mode yields an efficiency increase of roughly 35% over ICWC alone and expands the scope of the cleaning area. DC-GDC in the EAST tokamak, under the influence of a strong magnetic field, offers the benefits of high conditioning efficiency and the capability to tackle areas that are challenging for other wall conditioning methods to reach. Its potential synergy with a variety of techniques could further augment the cleaning area and improve the efficiency of tritium removal. These insights serve as crucial benchmarks for the removal of retained tritium in the presence of strong magnetic fields in future fusion reactors.
Published Version
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