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At least 37 records · Page 2
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Coated boron layers by boronization and a real-time boron coating using impurity powder dropper in LHD

In Large Helical Device (LHD), diborane (B 2 H 6 ) is used as a standard boron source for boronization, which is assisted by helium glow discharges. In 2019, a new Impurity Powder Dropper (IPD) system has been installed and is under evaluation as a real-time wall conditioning technique. In LHD), which is a large size heliotron device, an additional helium (He) glow discharge cleaning (GDC) after boronization has been operated for a reduction of hydrogen recycling from coated boron layers, and this operational time of 3 h was determined by spectroscopic data during glow discharges. A flat hydrogen profile is obtained on the top surface of coated boron on the specimen exposed to boronization, the result suggests a reduction of hydrogen at the top surface by He-GDC. Trapped oxygen in coated boron was obtained by boronization, and the coated boron, which has boron-oxide, on the first wall by B-IPD was also shown. Finally, considering the difference in coating areas between B 2 H 6 boronization and B-IPD operation, it would be most effective to use the IPD and B 2 H 6 boronization coating together for optimized wall conditioning.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Global gyrokinetic particle simulations of microturbulence in W7-X and LHD stellarators

Global gyrokinetic particle simulations of electrostatic ion temperature gradient (ITG) instability show that the most unstable eigenmode is localized to some magnetic fieldlines or discrete locations on the poloidal plane in the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) stellarator due to its mirror-like magnetic fields, which vary strongly in the toroidal direction and induce coupling of more toroidal harmonics (n) to form the linear eigenmode than in the Large Helical Device (LHD) stellarator. Nonlinear electrostatic simulation results show that self-generated zonal flows are the dominant saturation mechanism for the ITG instabilities in both the LHD and W7-X. Additionally, radial widths of the fluctuation intensity in both the LHD and W7-X are significantly broadened from the linear phase to the nonlinear phase due to turbulence spreading. Finally, nonlinear spectra in the W7-X are dominated by low-n harmonics, which can be generated both by nonlinear toroidal coupling of high-n harmonics and by linear toroidal coupling with large amplitude zonal flows due to the 3D equilibrium magnetic fields.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Long plasma duration operation analyses with an international multi-machine (tokamaks and stellarators) database

Combined high-fusion performance and long-pulse operation is one of the key integration challenges for fusion energy development in magnetic devices. Addressing these challenges requires an integrated vision of physics and engineering aspects with the purpose of simultaneously increasing time duration and fusion performance. Significant progress has been made in tokamaks and stellarators, including very recent achievement in duration and/or performance. This progress is reviewed by analyzing the experimental data (109 plasma pulses with a total of 3200 data points, i.e. on average 29 data per pulse) provided by ten tokamaks (in alphabetical order: Axially Symmetric Divertor Experiment Upgrade, DIII-D, Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak, Joint European Torus, JT-60 Upgrade, Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research, tokamak à configuration variable, Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor, Tore Supra, W Environment in Steady-State Tokamak) and two stellarators (Large Helical Device and Wendelstein 7-X) expanding the pioneering work of Kikuchi (Kikuchi M. and Azumi M. 2015 Frontiers in Fusion Research II: Introduction to Modern Tokamak Physics (Springer)). Data have been gathered up to January 2022 and coordination has been provided by the recently created International Energy Agency-International Atomic Energy Agency international Coordination on International Challenges on Long duration OPeration group. By exploiting the multi-machine international database, recent progress in terms of injected energies (e.g. 1730 MJ in L-mode, 425 MJ in H-mode), durations (1056 s in L-mode, 101 s in H-mode), injected powers, and sustained performance will be reviewed. Progress has been made to sustain long-pulse operation in tokamaks and stellarators with superconducting coils, actively cooled components, and/or with metallic walls. The graph of the fusion triple products as a function of duration shows a dramatic reduction of, at least two orders of magnitude when increasing the plasma duration from less than 1 s to 100 s. Indeed, long-pulse operation is usually reached in dominant electron-heating modes at reduced density (current drive optimization) but with low ion temperatures ranging from 1 to 3 keV for discharges above 100 s. Difficulties in extending the duration may arise from coupling high heating powers over long durations and the evolving plasma-wall interaction towards an unstable operational domain. Possible causes limiting the duration and critical issues to be addressed prior to ITER operation and DEMO design are reported and analyzed.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Theoretical analysis of energetic-ion-driven resistive interchange mode stabilization strategies using a Landau closure model

The aim of the present study is to perform a theoretical analysis of different strategies to stabilize energetic-ion-driven resistive interchange mode (EIC) in Large Helical Device (LHD) plasma. In this work, we use a reduced MHD for the thermal plasma coupled with a gyrofluid model for the energetic particles (EP) species. The hellically trapped EP component is introduced through a modification of the drift frequency to include their precessional drift. The stabilization trends of the 1/1 EIC observed experimentally with respect to the thermal plasma density and temperature are reproduced by the simulations, showing a reasonable agreement with the data. The LHD operation scenarios with stable 1/1 EIC are identified, leading to the stabilization of the 1/1 EIC if the thermal plasma density and temperature are above a given threshold. Additionally, the 1/1 EIC are also stabilized if the rotational transform is modified in a way that the 1/1 rational surface is located further away than 0.9 times the normalized radius, or the magnetic shear in the plasma periphery is enhanced. Also, LHD discharges with large magnetic fields show a higher EIC destabilization threshold with respect to the thermal plasma density. If the perpendicular NBI deposition region is moved further inward than 0.875 times the normalized radius the 1/1 EIC are also stabilized. Furthermore, increasing the perpendicular NBI voltage such that the EP energy is higher than 30 keV stabilizes the 1/1 EIC. Moreover, deuterium plasmas show a higher stability threshold for the 1/1 EIC than hydrogen plasmas. The experimental data shows a larger time interval between EIC events as the power of the tangential NBI is increased providing that the perpendicular NBI power is at least 13 MW. This implies a stabilizing effect of the tangential NBI.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Line identification of boron and nitrogen emissions in EUV and VUV wavelength ranges in the impurity powder dropping experiments of LHD and its application to spectroscopic diagnostics

An impurity powder dropper was installed in the 21st campaign of the Large Helical Device experiment (Oct. 2019–Feb. 2020) under a collaboration between the National Institute for Fusion Science and the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory for the purposes of real-time wall conditioning and edge plasma control. In order to assess the effective injection of the impurity powders, spectroscopic diagnostics were applied to observe line emission from the injected impurity. Therefore, extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) and vacuum-ultraviolet (VUV) emission spectra were analyzed to summarize observable impurity lines with B and BN powder injection. Emission lines released from B and N ions were identified in the EUV wavelength range of 5–300 Å measured using two grazing incidence flat-field EUV spectrometers and in the VUV wavelength range of 300–2400 Å measured using three normal incidence 20 cm VUV spectrometers. BI–BV and NIII–NVII emission lines were identified in the discharges with the B and BN powder injection, respectively. Useful B and N emission lines which have large intensities and are isolated from other lines were successfully identified as follows: BI (1825.89, 1826.40) Å (blended), BII 1362.46 Å, BIII (677.00, 677.14, 677.16) Å (blended), BIV 60.31 Å, BV 48.59 Å, NIII (989.79, 991.51, 991.58) Å (blended), NIV 765.15 Å, NV (209.27, 209.31) Å (blended), NVI 1896.80 Å, and NVII 24.78 Å. Applications of the line identifications to the advanced spectroscopic diagnostics were demonstrated, such as the vertical profile measurements for the BV and NVII lines using a space-resolved EUV spectrometer and the ion temperature measurement for the BII line using a normal incidence 3 m VUV spectrometer.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Plasma Wall Interaction with 3-D Plasma Boundaries

The interaction of the edge plasma and the material surfaces is one of the most critical challenges on the path to harness fusion power as new, fundamental energy source. This challenge typically combines the thrust to reach high density, low temperature (detached) plasmas in front of the divertor target plates as well as understanding the plasma material interaction (PMI) in particular in this regime. The combination of both research thrusts represents an extraordinarily challenging subject encompassing spatial scales spanning nanometers to meters in all states of matter and across a broad energy range. Modeling capabilities, which help to interpret data from nowadays experiments and enable extrapolation to future devices are urgently required. This is in particular true for toroidal magnetic confinement devices with three-dimensional (3D) plasma boundaries. Such plasma boundary geometries occur in tokamaks, when small amplitude magnetic perturbations are used to stabilize the unruly edge plasma or in stellarators, that are inherently 3D plasma confinement devices. In this project, the impact of 3D plasma boundaries on the plasma material interaction (PMI) was assessed. This work focused on plasma boundary conditions, in which high-density conditions at the material surfaces yield mitigation of the otherwise immense heat and particle loads that these materials would see. These so-called high recycling and eventually detached plasma regimes are of great interest for future reactor operation. In the project, key features that are unique to 3D boundaries were explored in comparison to canonically assumed axisymmetric plasma edge situations in tokamaks. In particular, the relevance of the 3D boundary situation in the extrapolation to the plasma boundary solution at ITER, the next step fusion energy experiment under construction as a multi-national, world-wide large-science experiment in southern France, has been explored. The EMC3-EIRENE plasma edge fluid and kinetic neutral transport code has been advanced to cope with the challenging and unprecedented conditions in the ITER boundary plasma including 3D fields that are planned to be used to suppress harmful edge instabilities, the so-called edge localized modes. This is a vital integration challenge for ITER and the results from this grant have provide a leading capability for this assessment. It was shown that the detachment process in a 3D edge solution for ITER follows the recycling regimes that are known from axisymmetric solutions, but that multiple plasma exhaust channels connected to the material surfaces are established which feature individual recycling characteristics. Because these channels touch the material surfaces in the divertor in a 3D geometry, the compatibility with the plasma material interaction (PMI), including erosion and impurity generation has been found to be an important part of the integration challenge. To address this, the fully 3D plasma material interaction code ERO2 has been adapted to these ITER specific geometries and a homogeneous mixing model was implemented, that allows to consider the mixing of Be and Was used at ITER in the PMI modeling. This model enhancement has been used to study non-local migration of Be in the JET ITER like wall configuration and it has been shown that with this model such complex migration processes in ITER relevant plasma shapes and with ITER relevant plasma boundary conditions can be addressed. The combined modeling approach using EMC3-EIRENE as a plasma boundary transport code and the ERO2 specialized PMI model will be an asset for the continued preparations of ITER operation as well as for Fusion Pilot Plant efforts that have emerged in the U.S. during the evolution of this grant. The predictive capability of this numerical tool has been validated at the DIII-D US national fusion facility. Here, dedicated plasma edge diagnostics were implemented to measure the impurity household around a 3D edge plasma during ELM suppression by 3D fields. Dedicated experiments with local material probes using these diagnostics and the state-of-the-art suite of boundary measurements at DIII-D have shown that the 3D perturbation of the plasma edge that is excreted by such 3D control fields yield a perturbation of the plasma boundary flux structure and hence also of the resulting PMI. The 3D boundary plasma is composed out of helical magnetic flux channels that intersect the divertor targets at an angle relative to the main guiding field, i.e., the toroidal magnetic field component of the tokamak. A similar effect has been measured as well on limiter surfaces during the startup campaign at the new stellarator experiment Wendelstein 7-X. These experiments ad initial analysis with the ERO plasma material interaction model, suggested that the place of erosion for a given particle from the surface and its re-deposition can be different in such 3D field geometries yielding potentially a significant level of net-erosion. This is not the case for axisymmetric solutions, where it was shown in the past that the eroded particles are effectively re-deposited into gaps produced by erosion at the same position and hence the net-erosion levels are small. For ITER, the quest to suppress the ELMs and at the same time maintain the integrity of the divertor is an issue, which these fundamental findings will help to resolve. The coupling of this work to the extrapolation in the ITER program has been addressed by both the PI and the lead numerical scientist being ITER Science Fellows in the duration of the contract and forward. A second focus in the exploration of 3D boundary effects on tokamaks and stellarators has been set on the measurement of helium exhaust features with such 3D fields. This is important because He represents the ash of the fusion process and needs to be exhausted. It was shown that 3D field application compatible with suppression of ELMs yields an increase of the helium exhaust performance. The ratio of the effective helium confinement time over the energy confinement time was reduced by almost 50% which demonstrated that the impact of helium accumulation in the plasma core with respect to the confinement of energy to sustain the fusion reaction is significantly improved with such 3D control fields. It was shown that this is the case for tokamaks as well as stellarators. At the Large helical Device in Japan, a similar enhancement of the helium exhaust features when small amplitude additional 3D fields were applied was measured. This is an important additional function of 3D field application and its impact on ITER is presently being studied in combination with investigations of helium exhaust in 3D field geometries of stellarator devices.

3D plasma edge transport↗
DOE OSTI2025

Global Gyrokinetic Simulations of Isotope Effects under Ambipolar Electric Fields and Advances Toward Whole-Volume Modeling

We review global gyrokinetic simulation studies on plasma transport in the Large Helical Device using XGC-S. XGC-S is an extended version of X-point Gyrokinetic Code for stellarators and has been progressively verified throughout the code development process. Verification tests of neoclassical transport successfully demonstrate the generation of an ambipolar electric field due to ripple-trapped particles. We perform quasi-linear analyses of the ion temperature gradient mode under the influence of the ambipolar electric field. The results reveal that the ambipolar electric field and the heavy hydrogen component in mixed isotope plasmas can lead to the favorable isotope effect observed in recent deuterium experiments. We also present recent efforts in code development toward whole-volume simulations, including the helical divertor region. A mesh generation scheme based on field-line tracing and the construction of curved surfaces perpendicular to the magnetic field would be promising for global field calculations in the whole-volume simulations.

Basic Plasma Phenomena and Gas Discharges↗
DOE OSTI2023

Plasma-parameter dependence of ro-vibrational temperatures for H 2 in LHD divertor

We analyzed a thousand visible spectra of Fulcher-α band measured for divertor plasmas in Large Helical Device. With a coronal model and Bayesian inference, the population distribution of hydrogen molecule in the electronic ground state was estimated. The non-thermal population distribution was recovered with a two-temperature model, which has two sets of rotational and vibrational temperatures, as well as their mixture coefficient. The lower rotational temperature significantly changes according to the plasma parameters. Its nearly linear dependence on the electron density was found, which is consistent with previous works. The lower vibrational temperature also shows a small density dependence, as reported by a previous work. On the other hand, the higher rotational and vibrational temperatures as well as the mixture coefficient only show slight changes over the broad range of plasma parameters. These population parameters show a significant correlation; with higher electron density, all the temperatures and the fraction of the higher-temperature component increase simultaneously. In conclusion, this suggests that the electron impact plays an important role to determine the population distribution.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2024

Glow Discharge Boronization and Real-Time Boronization Using an Impurity Powder Dropper in LHD

In the Large Helical Device (LHD), boronization is utilized for wall conditioning, employing two distinct methods: glow discharge using diborane gas and the injection of boron powder into the plasma via an impurity powder dropper (IPD). Glow discharge boronization is conducted after maintenance when the vacuum vessel is exposed to air and just before the start of an experimental campaign. In contrast, real-time boronization using the IPD is performed during discharges. The distribution of boron on plasma-facing components was assessed through long-term material probes in the case of glow discharge and through numerical simulations for the IPD method. Results indicated non-uniform boron distributions in both cases. The impact of these boronization techniques on impurity levels and the lifetime of their effects were also examined. Both methods effectively reduced oxygen and iron in the plasma, with the iron impurities originating from the first wall. For glow discharge boronization, the reduction in oxygen levels persisted until the end of the experimental campaign, whereas the reduction in iron levels only lasted a few days. In the case of boron injection during long pulse discharges exceeding 200 s, the suppression of oxygen and iron was observed. The effect on iron quickly diminished within several seconds after the injection ended, whereas the effect on oxygen lasted more than 100 s. The difference in the lifetimes of the boronization effects is further discussed.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Alfvén mode induced particle loss in LHD

Herein losses of beam ions due to Alfvén modes are simulated for discharges in the Large Helical Device at Toki, Japan, using a guiding center code. High frequency beam particle resonances are found for the equilibria for passing particles, providing locations for the destablization of Alfvén modes observed in the device. Losses due to even small modes due to these resonances are significant.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Experimental validation of a collision-radiation dataset for molecular hydrogen in plasmas

Quantitative spectroscopy of molecular hydrogen has generated substantial demand, leading to the accumulation of diverse elementary process data encompassing radiative transitions, electron-impact transitions, predissociations, and quenching. However, their rates currently available are still sparse, and there are inconsistencies among those proposed by different authors. In this study, we demonstrate an experimental validation of such a molecular dataset by composing a collisional-radiative model (CRM) for molecular hydrogen and comparing experimentally obtained vibronic populations across multiple levels. From the population kinetics of molecular hydrogen, the importance of each elementary process in various parameter space is studied. In low-density plasmas (electron density ne≲1017 m−3) the excitation rates from the ground states and radiative decay rates, both of which have been reported previously, determine the excited state population. The inconsistency in the excitation rates affects the population distribution the most significantly in this parameter space. However, in higher density plasmas (ne≳1018 m−3), the excitation rates from excited states become important, which have never been reported in the literature, and may need to be approximated in some way. In order to validate these molecular datasets and approximated rates, we carried out experimental observations for two different hydrogen plasmas; a low-density radio frequency heated plasma (ne≈1016 m−3) and the Large Helical Device (LHD) divertor plasma (ne≳1018 m−3). The visible emission lines from EF1Σg+, HH¯1Σg+, D1Πu±, GK1Σg+, I1Πg±, J1Δg±, h3Σg+, e3Σu+, d3Πu±,g3Σg+, i3Πg±, and j3Δg± states were observed simultaneously and their population distributions were obtained from their intensities. We compared the observed population distributions with the CRM prediction, in particular the CRM with the rates compiled by Janev et al., Miles et al., and those calculated with the molecular convergent close-coupling (MCCC) method. The MCCC prediction gives the best agreement with the experiment, particularly for the emission from the low-density plasma. However, the population distribution in the LHD divertor shows a worse agreement with the CRM than those from low-density plasma, indicating the necessity of the precise excitation rates from excited states. We also found that the rates for the electron attachment is inconsistent with experimental results. This requires further investigation.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Enhancement of mid-/high-Z impurity transport by continuous Li-granule dropping in a stellarator plasma

An enhancement of core impurity transport is observed in high-density plasmas of the stellarator large helical device, heated by neutral beam injection, when continuous lithium (Li) granule dropping is performed. In the reported experiments, in which the tracer-encapsulated solid pellet is employed to inject trace amounts of titanium (Ti) and molybdenum (Mo) into the plasma core, confinement times for these impurities are seen to reduce significantly when Li dropping is applied, this reduction being more notable for Mo. To gain some initial insight into these observations, simulations are performed using the drift-kinetic transport code SFINCS for the Mo case. These simulations indicate that, while neoclassical transport prevails for the main plasma components (electrons, majority ions, and low-Z impurities), the classical contribution appears dominant for transporting Mo impurities. In summary, this work reports the first experimental observation of the degradation of mid-Z and high-Z impurity confinement induced by the continuous dropping of Li granules into a high-density stellarator plasma. In the case of the Mo impurity, simulations suggest that classical transport is the key mechanism underlying the enhanced impurity transport.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Pressure-driven stochastization of flux surfaces in stellarator equilibria: a review of the experimental observations and their analysis

Stellarator vacuum fields are designed to have a dense set of nested flux surfaces, with only small islands and stochastic regions in the interior of the confinement region. As the plasma pressure is increased, pressure driven currents appear, and they can significantly modify the vacuum field. The question arises whether pressure driven currents can cause significant flux surface breakage. Both the Wendelstein 7-AS and large helical device stellarators had dedicated experimental campaigns to study the β limit in those devices. In this paper, we review the evidence that the flux surfaces in a significant fraction of the plasma volume were stochastized by the pressure-driven currents in the highest β experiments. That phenomenon appears to have been the dominant source of pressure-driven flux surface loss in these experiments.

stellarator equilibrium↗
DOE OSTI2024

Effects of hydrogen isotope species on ITG microturbulence in LHD

Abstract The linear and nonlinear effects of hydrogen isotope species on ion temperature gradient (ITG) instability in the Large Helical Device (LHD) stellarator are studied using radially global gyrokinetic simulation. We found that the coupling range of linear toroidal harmonics depends on the ion mass of the hydrogen isotope. The growth rates of ITG mode are almost the same for H, D, and T plasmas, indicating a gyro-Bohm scaling of ion-mass dependence. The nonlinear electrostatic simulations show that the zonal flow breaks the radially elongated eigenmode structures and reduces the size of the turbulence eddies, which suppresses the turbulence and the ion heat transport in the LHD. The turbulence amplitude without the zonal flow is almost the same for H, D, and T plasmas, while it decreases with increasing ion mass of the hydrogen isotope when the zonal flow is present. The reduction of the turbulent transport with larger ion mass is mostly due to the enhancement of zonal flows by larger ion mass. The ion heat conductivity deviates from the gyro-Bohm scaling for both cases with and without the zonal flow.

Physics↗
DOE OSTI2026

High resolution measurements of core density collapse dynamics in LHD

The core density collapse (CDC) is an abrupt instability that degrades the performance of super dense core stellarator plasmas on the Large Helical Device (LHD). In LHD, CDCs have proved to be an operational limit in so-called outward-shifted configurations. New measurements with high time resolution Thomson scattering characterize dynamics of the instability in the core. The density profile is observed to collapse inwards, narrowing the density peak till the core itself collapses. A hot, radially localized feature is also observed in the electron temperature profile during the collapse and disappears within a few hundred microseconds of CDC onset.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Quasioptical propagation and absorption of electron cyclotron waves: simulations and experiment

Electron-cyclotron resonance heating is an essential tool for manipulating fusion plasmas and has been diligently studied for decades through numerical simulations and experiments. Here, we report the first comparison of simulations using the quasioptical code PARADE (PAraxial RAy DEscription) with experiments using a target-plate system on the Large Helical Device. We find that the numerical and experimental results agree qualitatively, which makes PARADE a promising code for modeling of electron-cyclotron wave beams in future experiments. The signature advantage of PARADE is its ability to capture both mode conversion and inhomogeneity of the dissipation rate across the beam cross section. Accounting for these effects, which can noticeably affect the power deposition, significantly improves the agreement between numerical results and experimental data.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Isotope effects under the influence of global radial electric fields in a helical configuration

Isotope effects under the influence of a radial electric field are examined in a helical magnetic field configuration. We perform global gyrokinetic simulations with additional poloidal rotations to estimate quasi-linear heat flux due to ion temperature gradient mode under the mixing length model. In single-ion-species plasmas, the mass number dependency of heat flux agrees with gyro-Bohm scaling in the absence of a radial electric field. Favorable mass number dependencies violating gyro-Bohm scaling are observed in the presence of a global radial electric field or a heavy hydrogen component in multi-ion-species plasmas. The radial electric field and the heavy hydrogen component affect the heat flux through an increase of wavelength as well as mode stabilization. Poloidal Mach number characterizes the transition from unfavorable to favorable mass number dependency under radial electric fields. While the heat flux is independent of mass number for a given poloidal Mach number, the heat flux decreases for higher mass numbers in a given radial electric field. The heat flux is also independent of average mass number in multi-ion-species plasmas because the heavy hydrogen component effectively enhances the light hydrogen heat flux. The present results are potentially relevant to the violation of gyro-Bohm scaling observed in the recent deuterium experiments in the Large Helical Device.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Global gyrokinetic simulations of electrostatic microturbulent transport in LHD stellarator with boron impurity

Abstract Global gyrokinetic simulations of electrostatic microturbulent transport for discharge # 166256 of the Large Helical Device stellarator in the presence of boron impurity show the co-existence of the ion temperature gradient (ITG) turbulence and trapped electron mode (TEM) turbulence before and during boron powder injection. ITG turbulence dominates in the core, whereas TEM dominates near the edge, consistent with the experimental observations. Linear TEM frequency increases from ∼ 80 kHz to ∼ 100 kHz during boron injection, and ITG frequency decreases from ∼ 20 kHz to ∼ 13 kHz, consistent with the experiments. The poloidal wave number spectrum is broad for both ITG (0–0.5 mm −1 ) and TEM (0–0.25 mm −1 ). The nonlinear simulations with boron impurity show a reduction in the heat conductivity compared to the case without boron. The comparison of the nonlinear transport before and during boron injection shows that the ion heat transport is substantially reduced in the region where the TEM is dominant. However, the average electron heat transport throughout the radial domain and the average ion heat transport in the region where the ITG is dominant are similar. The simulations with boron show the effective heat conductivity values qualitatively agree with the estimate obtained from the experiment.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗