Study of the impact of pre- and real-time deposition of lithium on plasma performance on NSTX

The efficiency of two lithium (Li) injection methods used on the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) are compared in terms of the amount of Li used to produce equivalent plasma performance improvements, namely Li evaporation over the divertor plates, prior to the initiation of the discharge, and real-time Li injection directly into the plasma scrape-off layer during the discharge. The measurements show that the real-time method can affect the energy confinement and edge stability of NSTX plasmas in a more efficient way than the Li evaporation method as it requires only a fraction of the amount of Li used by the evaporation method to produce similar improvements.readme, digital data file

Exploration of magnetic perturbation effects on advanced divertor configurations in NSTX-U

The control of divertor heat loads - both steady state and transient - remains a key challenge for the successful operation of ITER and FNSF. Magnetic perturbations provide a promising technique to control ELMs (transients), but understanding their detailed impact is difficult due to their symmetry breaking nature. One approach for reducing steady state heat loads are so called 'advanced divertors' which aim at optimizing the magnetic field configuration: the snowflake and the (super-)X-divertor. It is likely that both concepts - magnetic perturbations and advanced divertors - will have to work together, and we explore their interaction based on the NSTX-U setup. An overview of different divertor configurations under the impact of magnetic perturbations is presented, and the resulting impact on plasma edge transport is investigated with the EMC3-EIRENE code. Variations in size of the magnetic footprint of the perturbed separatrix are found, which is related to the level of flux expansion on the divertor target. Non-axisymmetric peaking of the heat flux related to the perturbed separatrix is found at the outer strike point, but only in locations where flux expansion is not too large.readme, data file

Enhanced -->E*-->B drift effects in the TCV snowflake divertor

Measurements of various plasma parameters at the divertor targets of snowflake (SF) and conventional single-null configurations indicate an enhanced effect of the --&gt;E*--&gt;B drift in the scrape-off layer of plasmas in the SF configuration. Plasma boundary transport simulations using the EMC3-Eirene code show that the poloidal gradients of the kinetic profiles in the vicinity of the null-point of a SF divertor are substantially larger than those of a conventional single-null configuration. These gradients are expected to drive larger --&gt;E*--&gt;B flows in the SF divertor and are thought to be responsible for the formation of the double-peaked particle and heat flux target profiles observed experimentally. Experiments in forward and reversed toroidal magnetic field directions further support this conclusion. The formation of such a double-peaked profiles is enhanced at higher plasma densities and may have beneficial effects on the divertor heat loads since they lead to broader target profiles and lower peak heat fluxes.</p

Power exhaust in the snowflake divertor for L- and H-mode TCV tokamak plasmas

The snowflake (SF) divertor is a plasma configuration that may enable tokamak operation at high performance and lower peak heat loads on the plasma-facing components than a standard single-null divertor. This paper reports on the results of experiments performed on the TCV tokamak in both the low- and high-confinement regimes, wherein the divertor configuration was continuously varied between a standard single-null and a &#039;SF-plus&#039;, which features auxiliary strike points (SPs) in the private flux region of the primary separatrix. The measured edge properties show that, in L-mode, the fraction of the exhaust power reaching the additional SPs is small. During edge-localized modes, up to similar to 20% of the exhausted energy is redistributed to the additional SPs even at an x-point separation of 0.6 times the plasma minor radius, thereby reducing the peak heat flux to the inner primary SP by a factor of 2-3. The observed behaviour is qualitatively consistent with a proposed model for enhanced cross-field transport through the SF&#039;s relatively large region of low poloidal field by instability-driven convection

Power distribution in the snowflake divertor in TCV

TCV experiments demonstrate the basic power exhaust properties of the snowflake (SF) plus and SF minus divertor configurations by measuring the heat fluxes at each of their four divertor legs. The measurements indicate an enhanced transport into the private flux region and a reduction of peak heat fluxes compared to a similar single null configuration. There are indications that this enhanced transport cannot be explained by the modified field line geometry alone and likely requires an additional or enhanced cross-field transport channel. The measurements, however, do not show a broadening of the scrape-off layer (SOL) and, hence, no increased cross-field transport in the common flux region. The observations are consistent with the spatial limitation of several characteristic SF properties, such as a low poloidal magnetic field in the divertor region and a long connection length to the inner part of the SOL closest to the separatrix. Although this limitation is typical in a medium sized tokamak like TCV, it does not apply to significantly larger devices where the SF properties are enhanced across the entire expected extent of the SOL