Budget restrictions have forced the ITER Organization to reconsider the baseline divertor strategy, in which operations would begin with carbon (C) in the high heat flux regions, changing out to a ...full-tungsten (W) variant before the first nuclear campaigns. Substantial cost reductions can be achieved if one of these two divertors is eliminated. The new strategy implies not only that ITER would start-up on a full-W divertor, but that this component should survive until well into the nuclear phase. This paper considers the risks engendered by such an approach with regard to known W plasma-material interaction issues and briefly presents the current status of a possible full-W divertor design.
In ITER, as in any tokamak, the first wall and divertor plasma-facing components (PFC) must provide adequate protection of in-vessel structures, sufficient heat exhaust capability and be compatible ...with the requirements of plasma purity. These functions take on new significance in ITER, which will combine long pulse, high power operation with severe restrictions on permitted core impurity concentrations and which, in addition, will produce transient energy loads on a scale unattainable in today’s devices. The current ITER PFC design has now reached a rather mature stage following the 2007 ITER Design Review. This paper presents the key elements of the design, reviews the physics drivers, essentially thermal load specifications, which have defined the concept and discusses a selection of material and design issues.
► This is a review of the development of edge plasma modeling at ITER and of its interaction with the evolving divertor design. ► The SOLPS (B2-Eirene) code has been developed for the evaluation and ...the design of the ITER divertor for the last 15 years. ► Divertor modeling has developed into essential design tool synthesizing information from theoretical analysis, experimental studies, and engineering intuition. ► A number of examples given in the paper illustrate this process.
The paper presents a review of the development of edge plasma modeling at ITER and of its interaction with the evolving divertor design. The SOLPS (B2-Eirene) code has been developed for, and applied to, the evaluation and the design of the ITER divertor for the last 15 years. With respect to the physics and engineering design, divertor modeling had started as an evaluation tool and has developed into essential design tool synthesizing information from theoretical analysis, experimental studies, and engineering intuition. Examples given in the paper illustrate this process.
A simple, computationally efficient 1D model is suggested for the recycling of atomic and molecular hydrogen between the main chamber first wall (FW) of a tokamak and the peripheral plasma. The model ...is based on iteratively solving the kinetic equation for the 1D velocity distribution function (VDF) of hydrogen neutral atoms in the projection of velocity on the direction normal to the FW. The model results in a fast-converging routine due to the domination of the contribution to the VDF from long-distance, ballistic flights of the neutral atoms produced by the charge exchange of colder atoms with hotter plasma ions. The proposed modification of the ballistic model (BM) enhances its original version along the following lines: the account of the inelastic reflections of the neutral atoms from the wall; parameterisation of the boundary condition for the VDF of the atoms produced by the reflection of ions from the wall with immediate recombination, without capture in the wall and thermalisation there; extension to a mixture of hydrogen isotopes; elaboration of algorithms for speeding up computation on graphical processing units. The complete set of equations of the BM is published for the first time. The model is verified by comparison with the EIRENE code simulations of the VDF of neutral atoms and molecules in the scrape-off-layer around mid-plane for typical conditions of ITER operation. The applicability of the BM to the synthetic diagnostics developed for the H-alpha high-resolution spectroscopy is demonstrated. That is, the simple 1D model reproduces reasonably well the 1D projection of the data computed with the 3D Monte-Carlo code on a 2D plasma background.
The use of an all-metal first wall in future magnetic fusion reactors equipped with a divertor may impose severe limitations on the capabilities of optical diagnostics in the main chamber because of ...the divertor stray light (DSL) produced by reflections of the intense light emitted in the divertor. Here, we introduce a synthetic H-alpha diagnostics to estimate the errors of solutions of the inverse problems aimed at recovering the neutral hydrogen parameters (density and isotope ratio) in the scrape-off layer (SOL) with allowance for (a) strong DSL on the observation chords in the main chamber, (b) substantial deviation of the neutral atom velocity distribution function from a Maxwellian in the SOL, and (c) the data from the direct observation of the divertor. The results of recovering the relative contributions of all three sources to the signal along an observation chord in the main chamber (namely, from the high-field-side and low-field-side SOL sections of the observation chord, and the DSL), together with the isotope ratios in the SOL, are presented for the flattop stage of Q = 10 inductive operation of ITER.
The dependences of the intensities of the Stokes and anti-Stokes scattering components on the pump power are studied in plasmon-dielectric structures optimized to obtain giant enhancement of Raman ...scattering (surface-enhanced Raman scattering, SERS) in the infrared spectral range (for a 1064 nm laser, the SERS enhancement factor is 10
8
). It is found that the intensity of the anti-Stokes scattering channel increases superlinearly with the pump power, and this increase becomes much faster above a certain threshold power. In this case, the Stokes scattering intensity is a linear and then sublinear (at high pump powers) function of the laser pump power. It is shown that the threshold power depends on the concentration of organic molecules deposited on the amplifying structure and on the SERS enhancement factor. The observed behavior of the intensities of the Raman Stokes and anti-Stokes components indicates the importance of the stimulated light scattering mechanism in SERS structures. According to an analysis of the spectral positions of the scattering lines, molecules are excited to high vibrational energy levels under above-threshold laser excitation. This is manifested in the redshift of the anti-Stokes scattering lines.
The new SOLPS-ITER code package Wiesen, S.; Reiter, D.; Kotov, V. ...
Journal of nuclear materials,
08/2015, Letnik:
463
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The SOLPS-ITER package represents a renewed coupling of the up-to-date parallelized EIRENE Monte-Carlo code and the B2.5 edge plasma solver. Each part of the fluid-kinetic code system has been ...dismantled and analysed. For SOLPS-ITER, full backwards compatibility with previous SOLPS4.3 ITER reference simulations is critical. We present the results of the ongoing comprehensive benchmark activity and discuss how SOLPS-ITER can be tuned to reproduce ITER simulations performed with SOLPS4.3. In particular in SOLPS-ITER a quantitative “metric” to measure the level of code convergence has been implemented, with corresponding code diagnostics carried over from SOLPS4.3, allowing code run times to be accurately compared. Good agreement is found between the two codes in the tests so far. Remaining discrepancies in the solution in front of the divertor targets are likely related to different formulations of the equations and the different discretization schemes used by the codes.
The electron component is the main channel for anomalous power loss and the main indicator of transient processes in the tokamak plasma. The electron temperature and density profiles mainly determine ...the operational mode of the machine. This imposes demanding requirements on the precision and on the spatial and temporal resolution of the Thomson scattering (TS) measurements. Measurements of such high electron temperature with good accuracy in a large fusion device such as ITER using TS encounter a number of physical problems. The 40 keV TS spectrum has a significant blue shift. Due to the transmission functions of the fibres and to their darkening that can occur under a strong neutron irradiation, the operational wavelength range is bounded on the blue side. For example, high temperature measurements become impossible with the 1064 nm probing wavelength since the TS signal within the boundaries of the operational window weakly depends on Te. The second problem is connected with the TS calibration. The TS system for a large fusion machine like ITER will have a set of optical components inaccessible for maintenance, and their spectral characteristics may change with time. Since the present concept of the TS system for ITER relies on the classical approach to measuring the shape of the scattered spectra using wide spectral channels, the diagnostic will be very sensitive to the changes in the optical transmission. The third complication is connected with the deviation of the electron velocity distribution function from a Maxwellian that can happen under a strong ECRH/ECCD, and it may additionally hamper the measurements. This paper analyses the advantages of a 'multi-laser approach' implementation for the current design of the core TS system. Such an approach assumes simultaneous plasma probing with different wavelengths that allows the measurement accuracy to be improved significantly and to perform the spectral calibration of the TS system. Comparative analysis of the conservative and advanced approaches is given.
The recent advances in epitaxial SiC films' growth on Si are overviewed. The basic classical methods currently used for SiC films' growth are discussed and their advantages and disadvantages are ...explored. The basic idea and the theoretical background for a new method of the synthesis of epitaxial SiC films on Si are given. It will be shown that the new method is significantly different from the classical techniques of thin-film growth where the evaporation of the atoms onto the substrate surface is exploited. The new method is based on the substitution of some atoms in the silicon matrix by the carbon atoms to form the molecules of silicon carbide. It will be shown that the following process of SiC nucleation happens gradually without destroying the crystalline structure of the silicon matrix, and the orientation of a grown film is imposed by the original crystalline structure of the silicon matrix (not only by the substrate surface as in conventional methods of film growth). A comparison of the new method with other epitaxy techniques will be given. The new method of solid-phase epitaxy based on the substitution of atoms and on the creation of dilatation dipoles solves one of the major problems in heteroepitaxy. It provides the synthesis of low-defective unstrained epitaxial films with a large difference between the lattice parameters of the film and the substrate without using any additional buffer layers. This method has another unique feature distinguishing it from the classical techniques of SiC films' growth-it allows the growing of SiC films of hexagonal polytypes. A new kind of phase transformation in solids owing to the chemical transformation of one substance into another will be described theoretically and revealed experimentally. This type of phase transformation, and the mechanism of a broad class of heterogeneous chemical reactions between gas and solid phases, will be illustrated by an example of the growth of SiC epitaxial layers due to the chemical interaction of CO gas with the monocrystalline silicon matrix. The discovery of this mechanism yields a new kind of template: namely, substrates with buffer transition layers for wide-gap semiconductor growth on silicon. The properties of a variety of heteroepitaxial films of wide-gap semiconductors (SiC, AlN, GaN and AlGaN) grown on a SiC/Si substrate by solid-phase epitaxy will be reported. Grown films contain no cracks and have a quality sufficient to manufacture micro- and opto-electronic devices. Also, the new abilities in the synthesis of large (150 mm diameter) low-defective SiC films on Si substrates will be demonstrated.
The paper focuses on the study of transformation of silicon crystal into silicon carbide crystal via substitution reaction with carbon monoxide gas. As an example, the Si(1 0 0) surface is ...considered. The cross section of the potential energy surface of the first stage of transformation along the reaction pathway is calculated by the method of nudged elastic bands. It is found that in addition to intermediate states associated with adsorption of CO and SiO molecules on the surface, there is also an intermediate state in which all the atoms are strongly bonded to each other. This intermediate state significantly reduces the activation barrier of transformation down to 2.6 eV. The single imaginary frequencies corresponding to the two transition states of this transformation are calculated, one of which is reactant-like, whereas the other is product-like. By methods of quantum chemistry of solids, the second stage of this transformation is described, namely, the transformation of precarbide silicon into silicon carbide. Energy reduction per one cell is calculated for this 'collapse' process, and bond breaking energy is also found. Hence, it is concluded that the smallest size of the collapsing islet is 30 nm. It is shown that the chemical bonds of the initial silicon crystal are coordinately replaced by the bonds between Si and C in silicon carbide, which leads to a high quality of epitaxy and a low concentration of misfit dislocations.
