Fast-wave Current Drive Modelling for Large Non-circular Tokamaks PDF Download

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Languages : en
Pages : 5

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Book Description
It is widely recognized that a key element in the development of an attractive tokamak reactor, and in the successful achievement of the mission of ITER, is the development of an efficient steady-state current drive technique. Fast waves in the ion cyclotron range of frequencies hold the promise to drive steady-state currents with the required efficiency and to effectively heat the plasma to ignition. Advantages over other heating and current drive techniques include low cost per watt and the ability to penetrate to the center of high-density plasmas. The primary issues that must be resolved are: can an antenna array be designed to radiate the required spectrum of waves and have adequate coupling properties Will the rf power be efficiently absorbed by electrons in the desired velocity range without unacceptable parasitic damping by fuel ions or [alpha] particles What will the efficiency of current drive be when toroidal effects such as trapped particles are included Can a practical rf system be designed and integrated into the device We have addressed these issues by performing extensive calculations with ORION, a 2-D code, and the ray tracing code RAYS, which calculate wave propagation, absorption and current drive in tokamak geometry, and with RIP, a 2-D code that self-consistently calculates current drive with MHD equilibrium. An important figure of merit in this context is the integrated, normalized current drive efficiency. The calculations that we present here emphasize the ITER device. We consider a low-frequency scenario such that no ion resonances appear in the machine, and a high-frequency scenario such that the deuterium second harmonic resonance is just outside the plasma and the tritium second harmonic is in the plasma, midway between the magnetic axis and the inside edge. In both cases electron currents are driven by combined TTMP and Landau damping of the fast waves.