Wan Baonian

Physical Engineering Test and First Divertor Plasma Configuration in EAST

Physical engineering capability on the superconducting magnetic system of EAST was tested and first divertor plasma configuration in EAST was obtained. The extrapolation of the safety limit has verified the reliability of the system for long pulse operation. A stably controlled diverted plasmas configuration with an elongation κ in excess of 1.8 and plasma current of up to 500 kA, by using the (copper) internal coils to control the vertical displacement instability was obtained by an optimized plasma control algorithm. Highly shaped plasma at various configurations, which almost covers all designed configurations for EAST, was generated stably. A number of operational issues, such as plasma initiation, ramp up and configuration control with constraints of superconducting coils, were successfully investigated. All of the results obtained proved both the capability of the superconducting poloidal magnets for operation under steady-state condition and effectiveness of the plasma control algorithm for EAST.

Electron Cyclotron Emission Imaging on the EAST Tokamak

An upgraded electron cyclotron emission imaging (ECEI) system consisting of new optics lenses with necessary electronics for receiving and processing signals for two dimension (2D) ECEI diagnostics was installed on EAST. Hyperboloid lens were adopted in the new system to optimize the spatial resolutions. The mixers array of sixteen elements measured the plasma electron cyclotron emission at eight frequencies simultaneously, and the profiles of the electron temperature and its fluctuation in an area of 20 cm (vertical) × 6 cm (horizontal) could then be analyzed. Evolution of sawtooth precursor and crash in EAST was observed.

Equilibrium Reconstruction in EAST Tokamak

Reconstruction of experimental axisymmetric equilibria is an important part of tokamak data analysis. Fourier expansion is applied to reconstruct the vessel current distribution in EFIT code. Benchmarking and testing calculations are performed to evaluate and validate this algorithm. Two cases for circular and non-circular plasma discharges are presented. Fourier expansion used to fit the eddy current is a robust method and the real time EFIT can be introduced to the plasma control system in the coming campaign.

Charge Exchange Recombination Spectroscopy Based on Diagnostic Neutral Beam in HT-7 Tokamak

Charge exchange recombination spectroscopy (CXRS) based on a diagnostic neutral beam (DNB) installed in the HT-7 tokamak is introduced. DNB can provide a 6 A extracted current at 50 kV for 0.1 s in hydrogen. It can penetrate into the core plasma in HT-7. The CXRS system is designed to observe charge exchange (CX) transitions in the visible spectrum. CX light from the beam is focused onto 10 optical fibers, which view the plasma from −5 cm to 20 cm. The CXRS system can measure the ion temperature as low as 0.1 keV. With CXRS, the local ion temperature profile in HT-7 was obtained for the first time.

Runaway Electron Beam Instability in Slide-Away Discharges in the HT-7 Tokamak

Slide-away discharges are achieved by decreasing the plasma density or ramping down the plasma current in runaway discharges in the HT-7 tokamak. In the case of plasma current ramp down, the ratio of the electron plasma frequency to the electron cyclotron frequency is higher than in the stationary pulses when the discharge goes into a slide-away regime. The instability regime is characterized by relaxations in the electron cyclotron emission due to relativistic anomalous Doppler effect which transfers energy from parallel to perpendicular motion. The triggering of relativistic anomalous Doppler effect at higher density by ramping down of plasma current may provide a alternative runaway energy control scenario.

Enhanced Plasma Performance by ICRF Boronization

Boronization with carborane (C2B10H12) by ICRF has been applied routinely to the walls of HT-7 super-conducting tokamak for the reduction of impurity influx, especially carbon and oxygen. Significant suppression of metallic impurities and radiating power fraction are achieved. The improved confinement for both particle and energy is observed in full range of operation parameters. Energy balance analysis shows that electron heat diffusion coefficient is strongly reduced. Measurements by Langmuir probes at the edge plasma show that the poloidal velocity shear after boronization is changed to a profile favoring to good confinement. The main emphasis of this paper is to describe effects of boronization on aspects of the enhanced plasma performance.

One-Dimensional Vertical ECEI Diagnostic for HT-7 Tokamak

At the first stage of the electron cyclotron emission imaging (ECEI) diagnostic project on HT-7, a 16-channel vertical-resolved ECEI diagnostic has been developed and installed on HT-7 tokamak to measure electron cyclotron emission with a temporal resolution of 0.5 μsec. The system works at a fixed frequency of 97.5 GHz. The sample volumes of the system are aligned vertically with a vertical channel spacing of 11 mm, and can be shifted across the plasma cross-section by varying the toroidal magnetic field. The high spatial resolution of the system is achieved by utilizing a low-cost linear mixer/receiver array and an optical imaging system. The focus location may be shifted horizontally when translating one of the optical imaging elements. The details of the system design and laboratory testing of the ECEI optics are presented together with the preliminary experimental results.

Optimization and Update of EAST In-Vessel Components in 2011

For safe operation with active water cooling plasma facing components (PFCs) to handle a large input power over a long pulse discharge, some design optimization, R&D and maintenance were accomplished to improve the in-vessel components. For the purpose of large plasma current (1 MA) operation, the previous separated top and bottom passive stabilizers in the low field were electrical connected to stabilize plasma in the case of vertical displace events (VDEs). The design and experiments are described in this paper

A Dip Structure in the Intrinsic Toroidal Rotation Near the Edge of the Ohmic Plasmas in EAST

Ions toroidal velocity, vt, in both the outermost 4 cm of the confined region and the scrap-off layer of Ohmic L-mode plasmas in EAST was measured using Mach probes. At about 1 cm inside the separatrix a local minimum in vt was observed, from which a cocurrent rotation increased both inwards and outwards. The radial width of the vt dip was 1 cm to 2 cm, and both the density and electron temperature profiles exhibited steep gradients at this dip position. It was observed in both divertor and limiter configurations. To find out its origin, the toroidal torques induced by neutral friction, neoclassical viscosity, collisional perpendicular shear viscosity, ion orbit loss and turbulent Reynolds stress were estimated using the measured parameters. Our results indicate that in this particular parameter regime the neutral friction was the dominant damping force. The calculated cocurrent toroidal torque by the neoclassical viscosity dominates over those from the collisional perpendicular shear viscosity, ion orbit loss and turbulent Reynolds stress. These results are potentially important for the understanding of boundary conditions for the intrinsic toroidal momentum in tokamak plasmas.

Design of Thomson Scattering Diagnostic System on EAST

Primary physical design of the Thomson scattering system for EAST, including the configuration of the system and the design considerations of different sections of the system, is presented. The expected measurability of this design, namely an electron temperature of 50 eV to 5 keV and a plasma density beyond 0.5 × 1019 m−3, fulfills the requirements of the EAST operation.