Plasma facing surface composition during NSTX Li experiments

The spherical torus or spherical tokamak (ST) is a member of the tokamak family with its aspect ratio (A = R0/a) reduced to A ∼ 1.5, well below the normal tokamak operating range of A ≥ 2.5. As the aspect ratio is reduced, the ideal tokamak beta β (radio of plasma to magnetic pressure) stability limit increases rapidly, approximately as β ∼ 1/A. The plasma current it can sustain for a given edge safety factor q-95 also increases rapidly. Because of the above, as well as the natural elongation κ, which makes its plasma shape appear spherical, the ST configuration can yield exceptionally high tokamak performance in a compact geometry. Due to its compactness and high performance, the ST configuration has various near term applications, including a compact fusion neutron source with low tritium consumption, in addition to its longer term goal of an attractive fusion energy power source. Since the start of the two mega-ampere class ST facilities in 2000, the National Spherical Torus Experiment in the United St...

Recent progress on spherical torus research

The dynamics of a thin liquid film on the underside of a curved cylindrical substrate is studied. The evolution of the liquid layer is investigated as the film thickness and the radius of curvature of the substrate are varied. A dimensionless parameter (a modified Bond number) that incorporates both geometric parameters, gravity, and surface tension is identified, and allows the observations to be classified according to three different flow regimes: stable films, films with transient growth of perturbations followed by decay, and unstable films. Experiments and linear stability theory confirm that below a critical value of the Bond number curvature of the substrate suppresses the Rayleigh-Taylor instability.

Curvature suppresses the Rayleigh-Taylor instability

Edge fluid?plasma/kinetic?neutral SOLPS [1, 2] modeling of lithium (Li) transport and its effect on the edge plasma during real-time Li injection H-mode discharge on the EAST tokamak are analysed in this work. Since Li has strong chemical activity, deuterium (D) recycling is suppressed by a Li coated plasma-facing wall. By comparing the simulated edge plasma parameters between the no Li case and the Li injection case, it is found that both of the D atom and molecule densities in the divertor region are reduced with the Li injection. It is also found that most of the radiated power is radiated in the divertor. The simulation provides and analyzes the distributions of each Li ion charge state, and the evolution of Li impurity distribution. The simulation shows that the Li+ prefers to accumulate on the high-field side than on the low-field side, which is in qualitative agreement with the experimental measurements on EAST. The possible reason for the Li+ preferential accumulation is discussed in this study.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0029-5515/56/10/106018/pdf

SOLPS modeling of lithium transport in the scrape-off layer during real-time lithium injection on EAST

Wetting properties of liquid lithium on lithium compounds

https://zenodo.org/record/1000697/files/article.pdf

Jeffrey Spaleta

Papers

Experiments with liquid metal walls: Status of the lithium tokamak experiment