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Plasma–tungsten interactions in experimental advanced superconducting tokamak (EAST)

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Abstract

Tungsten (W) is used as the armor material of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) divertor and is regarded as the potential first wall material of future fusion reactors. One of the key challenges for the successful application of W in fusion devices is effective control of W at an extremely low concentration in plasma. Understanding and control of W erosion are not only a prerequisite for W impurity control, but also vital concerns to plasma-facing component (PFC) lifetime. Since the application of ITER-like water-cooled full W divertor in EAST in 2014, great efforts were made to investigate W erosion by experiment and simulation. A spectroscopic system was developed to provide a real-time measurement of W sputtering source. Both experiment and simulation results indicate that carbon (C) is the dominant impurity causing W sputtering in L-mode plasmas, which comes from the erosion of C plasma-facing material (PFM) in the lower divertor and the main chamber limiters. The mixture layer on the surface of W PFCs formed through redeposition or the wall coating can effectively suppress W erosion. Increasing the plasma density and radiation can reduce incident ion energy, thus alleviating W sputtering. In H-mode plasmas, control of edge localized mode (ELM) via resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) proves to be capable of suppressing intra-ELM W erosion. The experiences and lessons from the EAST W divertor are beneficial to the design, manufacturing and operation of ITER and beyond.

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Fig. 1

Reproduced with permission from Ref. [13]. Copyright 2017 AIP Publishing

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Reproduced with permission from Ref. [13]. Copyright 2017 AIP Publishing

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Reproduced with permission from Ref. [13]. Copyright 2017 AIP Publishing

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Reproduced with permission from Ref. [20]. Copyright 2018 AIP Publishing

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Reproduced with permission from Ref. [20]. Copyright 2018 AIP Publishing

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Reproduced with permission from Ref. [22]. Copyright 2018 AIP Publishing

Fig. 7

Reproduced with permission from Ref. [22]. Copyright 2018 AIP Publishing

Fig. 8
Fig. 9

Reproduced with permission from Ref. [25]. Copyright 2016 Elsevier

Fig. 10

Reproduced with permission from Ref. [25]. Copyright 2016 Elsevier

Fig. 11

Reproduced with permission from Ref. [25]. Copyright 2016 Elsevier

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Grant No. 11575243), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant Nos. 2017YFE0301300, 2017YFA0402500), and the Users with Excellence Project of Hefei Science Center CAS (Grant No. 2018HSC-UE008).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, 230031, China

    Fang Ding, Guang-Nan Luo, Xiahua Chen, Hai Xie, Rui Ding, Hongmin Mao, Zhenhua Hu, Jing Wu, Zhen Sun, Liang Wang, Youwen Sun & Jiansheng Hu

  2. Key Laboratory of Materials Modification by Laser, Ion and Electron Beams (Ministry of Education), School of Physics, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, China

    Chaofeng Sang

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Ding, F., Luo, GN., Chen, X. et al. Plasma–tungsten interactions in experimental advanced superconducting tokamak (EAST). Tungsten 1, 122–131 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42864-019-00019-4

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