Studies of the impurity pellet ablation in the high-temperature plasma of magnetic confinement devices

Abstract

The ablation of impurity pellets in tokamak and stellarator plasmas is investigated. Different mechanisms for shielding the heat fluxes from the surrounding plasma to the pellet surface are discussed. A model for impurity pellet ablation is developed that can account for both neutral and electrostatic shielding. It is shown that the experimental values of the impurity pellet ablation rate are well described by the neutral gas shielding model over a wide range of plasma temperatures and densities. Taking into account the electrostatic shielding leads to worse agreement between the predictions of the model and the experimental data; this result still remains unclear. Scaling laws are obtained that allow one to estimate the local ablation rate of impurity pellets made of various materials over a wide range of plasma parameters in the neutral gas shielding model.