First numerical analysis of runaway electron generation in tungsten-rich plasmas towards ITERShow others and affiliations
2024 (English)In: Nuclear Fusion, ISSN 0029-5515, E-ISSN 1741-4326, Vol. 64, no 3, article id 036024Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
The disruption and runaway electron analysis model code was extended to include tungsten impurities in disruption simulations with the aim of studying the runaway electron (RE) generation. This study investigates RE current sensitivity on the following plasma parameters and modelling choices: tungsten concentration, magnetic perturbation strength, electron modelling, thermal quench time and tokamak geometry-ITER-like or ASDEX-like. Our investigation shows that a tungsten concentration below 10-3 does not cause significant RE generation on its own. However, at higher concentrations it is possible to reach a very high RE current. Out of the two tested models of electrons in plasma: fluid and isotropic (kinetic), results from the fluid model are more conservative, which is useful when it comes to safety analysis. However, these results are overly pessimistic when compared to the isotropic model, which is based on a more reliable approach. Our results also show that the hot-tail RE generation mechanism is dominant as a primary source of RE in tungsten induced disruptions, usually providing orders of magnitude higher RE seed than Dreicer generation. We discuss best practices for simulations with tungsten-rich plasma, present the dependence of the safety limits on modelling choices and highlight the biggest shortcoming of the current simulation techniques. The obtained results pave the way for a wider analysis of tungsten impact on the disruption dynamics, including the mitigation techniques for ITER in the case of strong contamination of the plasma with tungsten.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
IOP Publishing , 2024. Vol. 64, no 3, article id 036024
Keywords [en]
runaway electrons, tungsten impurities, ITER, computational plasma physics
National Category
Fusion, Plasma and Space Physics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-343827DOI: 10.1088/1741-4326/ad24a0ISI: 001160832700001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85185008713OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kth-343827DiVA, id: diva2:1840350
Note
QC 20250210
2024-02-232024-02-232025-02-10Bibliographically approved