The prospect for fuel ion ratio measurements in ITER by collective Thomson scattering

Abstract

We show that collective Thomson scattering (CTS) holds the potential to become a new diagnostic principle for measurements of the fuel ion ratio, nT/nD, in ITER. Fuel ion ratio measurements will be important for plasma control and machine protection in ITER. Measurements of ion cyclotron structures in CTS spectra have been suggested as the basis for a new fuel ion ratio diagnostic which would be well suited for reactor environments and capable of providing spatially resolved measurements in the plasma core. Such measurements were demonstrated in recent experiments in the TEXTOR tokamak. Here we conduct a sensitivity study to investigate the potential measurement accuracy of a CTS fuel ion ratio diagnostic on ITER. The study identifies regions of parameter space in which CTS can be expected to provide useful information on plasma composition, and we find that a CTS fuel ion ratio diagnostic could meet the ITER measurement requirements for a standard ELMy H-mode discharge.