Sensitivity of Alcator C-Mod Dissipative Divertor Operation to Toroidal Peaking of Extrinsic Low-Z Impurity Seeding

ORAL

Abstract

In most present experiments, mitigation of heat and particle fluxes to plasma facing components is not necessary to avoid engineering limits, while dissipative divertor operation will be a requirement for reactor-scale facilities. ITER will use distributed sub-divertor impurity injection and seeks to explore the impact of non-axisymmetric divertor seeding, a possible result of injector failure. Results are presented from Alcator C-Mod experiments exploring the sensitivity of pedestal temperature and energy confinement degradation to the toroidal distribution of extrinsic low-Z seeding. At moderate N$_{2}$ fueling levels, outer divertor power loading could be strongly reduced, reaching P$_{\mathrm{ODIV}}$/P$_{\mathrm{NET}}$ \textless 10{\%}. In these case high confinement, H$_{98}$ $\sim$ 1, is sustained and plasmas are insensitive to the toroidal localization of the impurity seeding. Experiments with elevated N$_{2}$ that access a pronounced or fully detached regime demonstrate a transition to a reduced confinement H-mode, H$_{98}$ $\sim$ 0.7, which is sensitive to the toroidal peaking of the N$_{2}$ fueling. When utilizing all injection locations, minimizing non-axisymmetric effects, high confinement was sustained at total N$_{2}$ fueling rates that were at least 30-40{\%} higher than if impurities were introduced at a single location.

*Work supported by US DoE Cooperative agreement DE-FC02-99ER54512 at MIT using the Alcator C-Mod tokamak, a DOE Office of Science user facility.

Authors

  • Matthew Reinke

    • ORNL
    • Oak Ridge National Laboratory
  • Jeremy Lore

    • Oak Ridge National Laboratory
  • Brian LaBombard

    • MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center
  • Jim Terry

    • MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center
  • Dan Brunner

    • MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center
  • Bob Mumgaard

    • MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center
  • Richard Pitts

    • ITER Organization
  • Bruce Lipschultz

    • York Plasma Institute, Department of Physics, University of York