Y. N. Wei

Designing of the massive gas injection valve for the joint Texas experimental tokamak

In order to mitigate the negative effects of the plasma disruption a massive gas injection (MGI) valve is designed for the joint Texas experimental tokamak. The MGI valve is based on the eddy-current repulsion mechanism. It has a fueling volume of 30 ml. The piston of the MGI valve is made by non-ferromagnetic material, so it can be installed close to the vacuum vessel which has a strong toroidal magnetic field. A diode is use to prevent current oscillation in the discharge circuit. The drive coil of the valve is installed outside the gas chamber. The opening characteristics and the gas flow of the MGI valve have been tested by a 60 l vacuum chamber. Owing to the large electromagnetic force the reaction time of the valve is shorter than 0.3 ms. Duration for the opening of the MGI valve is in the order of 10 ms.

The behavior of runaway current in massive gas injection fast shutdown plasmas in J-TEXT

Runaway currents following disruptions have an important effect on the first wall in current tokamaks and will be more severe in next generation tokamaks. The behavior of runaway currents in massive gas injection (MGI) induced disruptions have been investigated in the J-TEXT tokamak. The cold front induced by the gas jet penetrates helically along field lines, preferentially toward the high field side and stops at a location near the q = 2 surface before the disruption. When the cold front reaches the q = 2 surface it initiates magnetohydrodynamic activities and results in disruption. It is found that the MGI of He or Ne results in runaway free shutdown in a large range of gas injections. Mixture injection of He and Ar (90% He and 10%Ar) consistently results in runaway free shutdown. A moderate amount of Ar injection could produce significant runaway current. The maximum runaway energy in the runaway plateau is estimated using a simplified model which neglects the drag forces and other energy loss mechanisms. The maximum runaway energy increases with decreasing runaway current. Imaging of the runaway beam using a soft x-ray array during the runaway current plateau indicates that the runaway beam is located in the center of the plasma. Resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) is applied to reduce the runaway current successfully during the disruption phase in a small scale tokamak, J-TEXT. When the runaway current builds up, the application of RMP cannot decouple the runaway beam due to the lower sensitivity of the energetic runaway electrons to the magnetic perturbation.

Enhancement of runaway production by resonant magnetic perturbation on J-TEXT

The suppression of runaways following disruptions is key for the safe operation of ITER. The massive gas injection (MGI) has been developed to mitigate heat loads, electromagnetic forces and runaway electrons (REs) during disruptions. However, MGI may not completely prevent the generation of REs during disruptions on ITER. Resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) has been applied to suppress runaway generation during disruptions on several machines. It was found that strong RMP results in the enhancement of runaway production instead of runaway suppression on J-TEXT. The runaway current was about 50% pre-disruption plasma current in argon induced reference disruptions. With moderate RMP, the runway current decreased to below 30% pre-disruption plasma current. The runaway current plateaus reach 80% of the pre-disruptive current when strong RMP was applied. Strong RMP may induce large size magnetic islands that could confine more runaway seed during disruptions. This has important implications for runaway suppression on large machines.

Measurement of the toroidal radiation asymmetry during massive gas injection triggered disruptions on J-TEXT

Disruptions have the potential to cause severe damage to large tokamaks like ITER. The mitigation of disruption damage is one of the essential issues for the tokamak. Massive gas injection (MGI) is a technique in which large amounts of a noble gas are injected into the plasma in order to safely radiate the plasma energy evenly over the entire plasma-facing wall. However, the radiated energy during the disruption triggered by massive gas injection is found to be toroidally asymmetric. In order to investigate the spatial and temporal structures of the radiation asymmetry, the radiated power diagnostics for the J-TEXT tokamak have been upgraded. The multi-channel arrays of absolute extreme ultraviolet photodiodes have been upgraded at four different toroidal positions to investigate the radiation asymmetries during massive gas injection. It is found that the toroidal asymmetry is associated with plasma properties and MGI induced MHD activities.

Design of a shattered pellet injection system on J-TEXT tokamak

Disruptions have the possibility of causing severe wall damage to large tokamaks like ITER. The mitigation of disruption damage is essential to the safe operation of a large-scale tokamak. The shattered pellet injection (SPI) technique, which is regarded as the primary injection method for ITER, presents several advantages relative to massive gas injection, including more rapid particle delivery, higher total particle assimilation, and more centrally peaked particle deposition. A dedicated argon SPI system that focuses on disruption mitigation and runaway current dissipation has been designed for the Joint Texas Experimental Tokamak (J-TEXT). A refrigerator is used to form a single argon pellet at around 64 K. The pellet will be shaped with a 5 mm diameter and a 1.5-10 mm length. Helium gas at room temperature will be used as a propellant gas for pellet acceleration. The pellet can be injected with a speed of 150-300 m/s. The time interval between injection cycles is about 8 min. The pellet will be shattered at the edge of the plasma and then injected into the core of plasma. The first experiments of SPI fast shutdown and runaway current dissipation have been performed.

Measurement of the internal magnetic fluctuation by the transport of runaways on J-TEXT

The measurement of internal magnetic fluctuation is important for the study of transport in tokamak plasmas. The runaway electron transport induced by the sawtooth crash can be used to obtain the internal magnetic fluctuation. Inversed sawtooth-like activities on hard x-ray (HXR) fluxes following sawtooth activities were observed after the application of electrode biasing on J-TEXT tokamak. The runaway diffusion coefficient Dr is deduced to be about 30 m2/s according to the time delay of HXR flux peaks to the sawtooth crashes. The averaged value of normalized magnetic fluctuation in the discharges with electrode biasing was increased to the order of 1 × 10-4.

Measurement of the electron and ion temperatures by the x-ray imaging crystal spectrometer on joint Texas experimental tokamak

An x-ray imaging crystal spectrometer has been developed on joint Texas experimental tokamak for the measurement of electron and ion temperatures from the Kα spectra of helium-like argon and its satellite lines. A two-dimensional multi-wire proportional counter has been applied to detect the spectra. The electron and ion temperatures have been obtained from the Voigt fitting with the spectra of helium-like argon ions. The profiles of electron and ion temperatures show the dependence on electron density in ohmic plasmas.

Prediction of density limit disruptions on the J-TEXT tokamak

Disruption mitigation is essential for the next generation of tokamaks. The prediction of plasma disruption is the key to disruption mitigation. A neural network combining eight input signals has been developed to predict the density limit disruptions on the J-TEXT tokamak. An optimized training method has been proposed which has improved the prediction performance. The network obtained has been tested on 64 disruption shots and 205 non-disruption shots. A successful alarm rate of 82.8% with a false alarm rate of 12.3% can be achieved at 4.8 ms prior to the current spike of the disruption. It indicates that more physical parameters than the current physical scaling should be considered for predicting the density limit. It was also found that the critical density for disruption can be predicted several tens of milliseconds in advance in most cases. Furthermore, if the network is used for real-time density feedback control, more than 95% of the density limit disruptions can be avoided by setting a proper threshold.