Nitrogen-induced complete divertor detachment during stable H-Mode operation in ASDEX Upgrade

ORAL

Abstract

Future fusion devices like DEMO will likely require to be operated with a detached divertor to meet power exhaust requirements and material limits alike. Detachment of the inner divertor target is regularly observed in H-mode operation in various tokamaks. Despite some efforts complete divertor detachment in H-mode at both divertor targets simultaneously had been an inaccessible operation regime in the all-tungsten ASDEX Upgrade so far. Recently, however, stable H-mode operation with completely detached divertor targets has been achieved. The complete detachment of the outer target was induced by simultaneous, strong nitrogen and deuterium puffing into the private-flux region, i.e. the divertor. An appropriate seeding scheme avoids central accumulation of tungsten and leads to almost complete mitigation of tungsten sputtering at the divertor targets. The newly found detachment regime in H-mode is compared to recent findings in L-mode and the impact of strong nitrogen seeding on the (divertor) plasma is assessed. In order to understand the experimental results and gain further insight into the H-mode detachment process accompanying numerical modeling efforts with SOLPS are carried out.

Authors

  • Felix Reimold

    • Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics
  • Matthias Bernert

    • Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics
  • David Coster

    • Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics
  • Rainer Fischer

    • Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics
  • Arne Kallenbach

    • Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics
  • Rachael McDermott

    • Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics
  • Steffen Potzel

    • Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics
  • Ulrich Stroth

    • Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics
  • Eleonora Viezzer

    • Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics
  • Marco Wischmeier

    • Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics