A disruption mitigation system (DMS) is necessary for fusion-grade tokamaks like ITER in order to ensure the preservation of machine components throughout their designated operational lifespan. To address the intense heat and electromagnetic loads that occur during a disruption, a shattered pellet injection (SPI) system will be employed. The penetration and assimilation (ionized material that stays inside the plasma volume) of the injected material is influenced by various SPI parameters, including the fragment sizes, speeds, and composition of the shattered fragments. An SPI system was installed on the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak to study the effect of the aforementioned parameters. In this thesis, 1.5D simulations with the INDEX code have been utilised to conduct parametric scans, thus examining the influence of fragment sizes, velocities, and pellet composition on the efficacy of disruption mitigation.
When injecting only deuterium, I found material assimilation to be limited to the edge of the plasma with larger and faster fragments leading to higher assimilation. For mixed deuterium/neon injections, again, larger and faster fragments enabled higher assimilation. The amount of assimilated neon increased with increasing injected neon amounts but saturated for larger neon fraction pellets. I also carried out comparisons with previous experimental results of penetration, material assimilation and pre-TQ duration. Previous experimental results for pure deuterium injections indicated that larger and faster fragments exhibit greater penetration, aligning with findings from the simulations. Simulated material assimilation trends for pure deuterium injections were also found to be qualitatively similar to the experiments. Nonetheless, a major difference in the quantitative assimilation values was identified, likely associated with the experimental assimilation criterion.
JOREK 3D non-linear MagnetoHydroDynamic (MHD) simulations of pure Deuterium Shattered Pellet Injection in ITER are presented. It is shown that such a scheme could allow diluting the plasma by more than a factor 10 without immediately triggering large MHD activity, provided the background impurity density is low enough. This appears as a promising strategy to reduce the risk of hot tail Runaway Electron (RE) generation and to avoid RE beams altogether in ITER, motivating further studies in this direction.
The possibility of using Shattered Pellet Injection(s) after the Thermal Quench phase of an ITER disruption in order to deplete Runaway Electron (RE) seeds before they can substantially avalanche is studied. Analytical and numerical estimates of the required injection rate for shards to penetrate into the forming RE beam and stop REs are given. How much material could be assimilated before the Current Quench (CQ) becomes too short is also estimated. It appears that, if Hydrogen pellets were used, the required number of pellets to be injected during the CQ would be prohibitive, at least conside…
The complete refuelling of the plasma density loss (pump-out) caused by mitigation of Edge Localised Modes (ELMs) is demonstrated on the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak. The plasma is refuelled by injection of frozen deuterium pellets and ELMs are mitigated by external resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs). In this experiment relevant dimensionless parameters, such as relative pellet size, relative RMP amplitude and pedestal collisionality are kept at the ITER like values. Refuelling of density pump out requires a factor of two increase of nominal fuelling rate. Energy confinement and pedestal temperat…
An effective disruption mitigation system in a tokamak reactor should limit the exposure of the wall to localized heat losses and to the impact of high current runaway electron beams, and avoid excessive forces on the structure. We evaluate with respect to these aspects a two-stage deuterium-neon shattered pellet injection in an ITER-like plasma, using simulations with the DREAM framework [M. Hoppe et al (2021) Comp. Phys. Commun. 268, 108098]. To minimize the obtained runaway currents an optimal range of injected deuterium quantities is found. This range is sensitive to the opacity of the pla…
First simulations of deuterium shattered pellet injection (SPI) into an ASDEX Upgrade H-Mode plasma with the JOREK MHD code are presented. Resistivity is increased by one order of magnitude in most simulations to reduce computational costs and allow for extensive parameter scans. The effect of various physical parameters onto MHD activity and thermal quench (TQ) dynamics is studied and the influence of MHD onto ablation is shown. TQs are obtained quickly after injection in most simulations with a typical duration of 100 microseconds, which slows down at lower resistivity. Although the n=1 magn…
Quantitative 3D non-linear simulations of shattered pellet injection in ASDEX Upgrade using JOREK
Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics（马克斯·普朗克等离子体物理研究所）；Beihang University（北京航空航天大学）；ITER Organization（国际热核聚变实验堆组织）；Institute of Plasma Physics of the CAS（捷克科学院等离子体物理研究所）；CEA/IRFM（法国原子能和替代能源委员会/核聚变研究集成设施）；École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)（洛桑联邦理工学院）
The fragment ablation rate plays significant roles in the mitigation efficiency of Shattered Pellet Injection (SPI) as a Disruption Mitigation System (DMS). Current mainstream 3D MHD codes modelling SPIs mostly assume instantaneous thermalization between the previously hot ambient electrons and the newly released cold electrons, which results in underestimation of the ablation rate if the hot electron thermalization time is comparable or even longer than the fragment flying time. To resolve this doubt, we hereby investigate the thermalization dynamics and the overall hot-electron impact. The f…
The radiation response and the MHD destabilization during the thermal quench after a mixed species Shattered Pellet Injection (SPI) with impurity species neon and argon are investigated via 3D non-linear MHD simulation using the JOREK code. Both the $n=0$ global current profile contraction and the local helical cooling at each rational surface caused by the pellet fragments are found to be responsible for MHD destabilization after the injection. Significant current driven mode growth is observed as the fragments cross low order rational surfaces, resulting in rapidly inward propagating stochas…
The lifetime and utilization of a nuclear fusion reactor like ITER depends strongly on its capabilities to mitigate damage during disruptions. While shattered pellet injection (SPI) was chosen as the baseline mitigation method for ITER, the exact relation of pellet injection parameters and the resulting fragment distributions is not yet clear. This knowledge is of paramount importance for optimizing the impurity deposition and disruption mitigation efficiency. In this thesis, I present fragmentation analysis of 170 SPI pellets, with the focus on the produced fragment sizes as a function of nor…
AXUV synthetic diagnostic for ASDEX Upgrade and its application for SPI simulations
Budapest University of Technology and Economics（布达佩斯技术与经济大学）；Institute for Atomic Energy Research, HUN-REN Centre for Energy Research（原子能研究所，匈牙利研究网络能源研究中心）；Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics（马克斯·普朗克等离子体物理研究所）；Chalmers University of Technology（查尔姆斯理工大学）；Institute of Plasma Physics, Czech Academy of Sciences（捷克科学院等离子体物理研究所）；ITER Organization（国际热核聚变实验堆组织）；Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne（洛桑联邦理工学院）
A 3D numerical model for the ablation of pellets and shattered pellet injection (SPI) fragments in tokamaks in the plasma disruption mitigation and fueling parameter space has been developed based on the Lagrangian particle code [R. Samulyak, X. Wang, H.-S. Chen, Lagrangian Particle Method for Compressible Fluid Dynamics, J. Comput. Phys., 362 (2018), 1-19]. The pellet code implements the low magnetic Reynolds number MHD equations, kinetic models for the electronic heating, a pellet surface ablation model, an equation of state that supports multiple ionization states, radiation, and a model fo…
Evolution of SPI-induced disruptions in ASDEX Upgrade
Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics（马克斯·普朗克等离子体物理研究所）；Institute of Plasma Physics of the CAS（捷克科学院等离子体物理研究所）；Institute for Applied Physics（应用物理研究所）
