Mikhail Tokar

By Mikhail Tokar

Part of the book: Two Phase Flow, Phase Change and Numerical Modeling

By Mikhail Tokar

Part of the book: Heat Transfer

By Mikhail Tokar

At the first wall of a fusion reactor, charged plasma particles are recombined into neutral molecules and atoms recycling back into the plasma volume where charge exchange (cx) with ions. As a result hot atoms with chaotically directed velocities are generated which can strike and erode the wall. An approach to solve the kinetic equation in integral form for cx atoms, being alternative to statistical Monte Carlo methods, has been speeded up by a factor of 50, by applying an approximate pass method to evaluate integrals, involving the ion velocity distribution function. It is applied to two-dimensional transfer of cx atoms near the entrance of a duct, guiding to the first mirror for optical observations. The energy spectrum of hot cx atoms, escaping into the duct, is calculated and the mirror erosion rate is assessed. Computations are done for a molybdenum first mirror under plasma conditions expected in the fusion reactor DEMO. Kinetic modeling results are compared with those found with a diffusion approximation valid in very cold and dense plasmas. For ducts at the torus outboard a more rigorous kinetic consideration predicts an erosion rate by a factor up to 2 larger than the diffusion approximation.

Part of the book: Plasma Science and Technology

By Masahiro Kobayashi and Mikhail Tokar

Good plasma performance in magnetic fusion devices of different types, both tokamaks and helical devices, is achieved normally if the plasma density does not exceed a certain limit. In devices with a divertor, such as tokamaks JET, JT-60U, and heliotron large helical device (LHD), by approaching the density limit, the plasma detaches from the divertor target plates so that the particle and heat fluxes onto the targets reduce dramatically. This is an attractive scenario for fusion reactors, offering a solution to the plasma-wall interaction problem. However, the main concerns by realizing such a scenario are the stability of the detached zone. The activity on the heliotron LHD aimed on detachment stabilization, by applying a resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) and generating a wide magnetic island at the plasma edge, will be reviewed. Also, theoretical models, explaining the detachment conditions, low-frequency oscillations at the detachment onset, and mechanisms of the detached plasma stabilization by RMP, will be discussed.

Part of the book: Fusion Energy