On the mechanisms governing gas penetration into a tokamak plasma during a massive gas injection

A new 1D radial fluid code, IMAGINE, is used to simulate the penetration of gas into a tokamak plasma during a massive gas injection (MGI). The main result is that the gas is in general strongly braked as it reaches the plasma, due to mechanisms related to charge exchange and (to a smaller extent) recombination. As a result, only a fraction of the gas penetrates into the plasma. Also, a shock wave is created in the gas which propagates away from the plasma, braking and compressing the incoming gas. Simulation results are quantitatively consistent, at least in terms of orders of magnitude, with experimental data for a D 2 MGI into a JET Ohmic plasma. Simulations of MGI into the background plasma surrounding a runaway electron beam show that if the background electron density is too high, the gas may not penetrate, suggesting a possible explanation for the recent results of Reux et al in JET (2015 Nucl. Fusion 55 093013)

Disruption prediction with artificial intelligence techniques in tokamak plasmas

In nuclear fusion reactors, plasmas are heated to very high temperatures of more than 100 million kelvin and, in so-called tokamaks, they are confined by magnetic fields in the shape of a torus. Light nuclei, such as deuterium and tritium, undergo a fusion reaction that releases energy, making fusion a promising option for a sustainable and clean energy source. Tokamak plasmas, however, are prone to disruptions as a result of a sudden collapse of the system terminating the fusion reactions. As disruptions lead to an abrupt loss of confinement, they can cause irreversible damage to present-day fusion devices and are expected to have a more devastating effect in future devices. Disruptions expected in the next-generation tokamak, ITER, for example, could cause electromagnetic forces larger than the weight of an Airbus A380. Furthermore, the thermal loads in such an event could exceed the melting threshold of the most resistant state-of-the-art materials by more than an order of magnitude. To prevent disruptions or at least mitigate their detrimental effects, empirical models obtained with artificial intelligence methods, of which an overview is given here, are commonly employed to predict their occurrence—and ideally give enough time to introduce counteracting measures

Myeloid-Derived Suppressor Cells in Tumor-Induced T Cell Suppression and Tolerance

Tumor development is often associated with a deep alteration of normal myelopoiesis, leading to a progressive accumulation of various cellular elements, belonging to myelomonocytic lineage, in the tumor bed, in the blood, and in both primary and secondary lymphoid organs. This heterogeneous pool of cells expresses, in the mouse, the common markers CD11b and Gr-1 (Ly6C/G) and is endowed with the ability to suppress antigen and/or polyclonal-driven T cell immune response. These cells, named myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs), are mobilized from hematopoietic organs by cytokines and other factors produced by the tumors, as well as by strong activation of the immune system, and have a profound influence on the outcome of the T cell-dependent immune responses. MDSCs can restrain T cell function directly in an antigen-independent manner; however, in vivo, MDSCs can also process and present tumor-associated antigen and can lead to T cell tolerance in an antigen-specific manner. Furthermore, MDSCs seem to be key players in tumor-induced suppressive network that includes T regulatory (Treg) cells, inhibitory natural killer T (NKT) cells, mast cells, Th17, as well as effector T cells. The importance of MDSCs in human malignancies has been demonstrated in recent years and new approaches targeting their suppressive/tolerogenic action are currently being tested in both preclinical model and clinical trials

Validation of the ICRF antenna coupling code RAPLICASOL against TOPICA and experiments

In this paper we validate the finite element code RAPLICASOL, which models radiofrequency wave propagation in edge plasmas near ICRF antennas, against calculations with the TOPICA code. We compare the output of both codes for the ASDEX Upgrade 2-strap antenna, and for a 4-strap WEST-like antenna. Although RAPLICASOL requires considerably fewer computational resources than TOPICA, we find that the predicted quantities of experimental interest (including reflection coefficients, coupling resistances, S- and Z-matrix entries, optimal matching settings, and even radiofrequency electric fields) are in good agreement provided we are careful to use the same geometry in both codes

Study of fast-ion transport induced by fishbones on JET

The impact of fishbone oscillations onto a confined fast-ion population is simulated for a JET plasma and benchmarked against experiment quantitatively with the help of neutron rate measurements. The transient drops in volume integrated neutron emission are found to be mainly caused by the spatial redistribution of the (neutral beam injected) fast-ion population confined in the plasma rather than by fast-ion loss. The simulations yield a quadratic dependence of the neutron drop on the fishbone amplitude. It is found that the simulations are able to correctly reproduce the magnitude of the experimentally observed drop in volume integrated neutron emission to within a factor 2. Furthermore, frequency chirping is found to be important. Omitting the fishbone frequency chirp in the simulations reduces the magnitude of the neutron rate drop (and hence fast-ion redistribution) to about half its original value

Non-resonant magnetic braking on JET and TEXTOR

The non-resonant magnetic braking effect induced by a non-axisymmetric magnetic perturbation is investigated on JET and TEXTOR. The collisionality dependence of the torque induced by the n = 1, where n is the toroidal mode number, magnetic perturbation generated by the error field correction coils on JET is observed. The observed torque is located mainly in the plasma core (normalized radius

Sawtooth pacing with on-axis ICRH modulation in JET-ILW

A novel technique for sawteeth control in tokamak plasmas using ion-cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH) has been developed in the JET-ILW tokamak. Unlike previous ICRH methods, that explored the destabilization of the internal kink mode when the radio-frequency (RF) wave absorption was placed near the q = 1 surface, the technique presented here consists of stabilizing the sawteeth as fast as possible by applying the ICRH power centrally and subsequently induce a sawtooth crash by switching it off at the appropriate instant. The validation of this method in JET-ILW L-mode discharges, including preliminary tests in H-mode plasmas, is presented

Hybrid cancellation of ripple disturbances arising in AC/DC converters

In AC/DC converters, a peculiar periodic nonsmooth waveform arises, the so-called ripple. In this paper we propose a novel model that captures this nonsmoothness by means of a hybrid dynamical system performing state jumps at certain switching instants, and we illustrate its properties with reference to a three phase diode bridge rectifier. As the ripple corrupts an underlying desirable signal, we propound two observer schemes ensuring asymptotic estimation of the ripple, the first with and the second without knowledge of the switching instants. Our theoretical developments are well placed in the context of recent techniques for hybrid regulation and constitute a contribution especially for our second observer, where the switching instants are estimated. Once asymptotic estimation of the ripple is achieved, the ripple can be conveniently canceled from the desirable signal, and thanks to the inherent robustness properties of the proposed hybrid formulation, the two observer schemes require only that the desirable signal is slowly time varying compared to the ripple. Exploiting this fact, we illustrate the effectiveness of our second hybrid observation law on experimental data collected from the Joint European Torus tokamak