Runaway electron generation during plasma shutdown by killer pellet injection
Tokamak discharges are sometimes terminated by disruptions that may cause large mechanical and thermal loads on the vessel. To mitigate disruption-induced problems it has been proposed that ‘killer’ pellets could be injected into the plasma in order to safely terminate the discharge. Killer pellets enhance radiative energy loss and thereby lead to rapid cooling and shutdown of the discharge. But pellets may also cause runaway electron generation, as has been observed in experiments in several tokamaks. In this work, runaway dynamics in connection with deuterium or carbon pellet-induced fast plasma shutdown is considered. A pellet code, which calculates the material deposition and initial cooling caused by the pellet is coupled to a runaway code, which determines the subsequent temperature evolution and runaway generation. In this way, a tool has been created to test the suitability of different pellet injection scenarios for disruption mitigation. If runaway generation is avoided, the resulting current quench times are too long to safely avoid large forces on the vessel due to halo currents.
Damping of relativistic electron beams by synchrotron radiation
Relativistic electrons emit synchrotron radiation due to their gyro- and guiding-center motions in a curved magnetic field. In this article, the kinetic theory of relativistic electron beams is developed to account for radiation reaction by including the Abraham–Lorentz reaction force in the kinetic equation. As an application of this theory, the dynamics of runaway electrons is examined and a steady-state solution is constructed describing a balance between acceleration by the electric field, pitch-angle scattering, and radiation reaction. Furthermore, it is found that a beam of relativistic electrons can be slowed down by the combined effects of pitch-angle scattering and radiation reaction. This damping can be more efficient than ordinary collisional drag, and appears to explain the decay of post-disruption runaway currents in the Joint European Torus (JET) [R. D. Gill, Nucl. Fusion 33, 1613 (1993)].
Evaluation of potential runaway generation in large-tokamak disruptions
A detailed evaluation of various potential mechanisms for the generation of strong runaway beams during disruptions of largetokamak devices, including TFTR, JET, DIIID and ITER, is performed based on typical operating parameters of these devices and the presently accepted disruption model. The main results include: (1) In the existing devices, the evaporative preicer'' process by itself can lead to sizable runaway beams in disruptions of high-current-medium-to-low-ne discharges. In ITER, such runaways are expected mainly for discharges with ne values sizably smaller than the projected typical ones. (2) Runaway generation also may occur during post-thermal-quench period through the untrapping of trapped hot-thermal electrons remaining from the pre-thermal-quench plasma; this process may be directly important in particular in disruptions of high-T[sub e] discharges with details depending on the time required for reclosure of the magnetic surfaces. Both processes (1) and (2) will occur and be completed mostly during the initial few 100 [mu]sec after the thermal quench. (3) Subsequently, close collisions of runaways with cold plasma electrons generally will lead to an exponential growth ( avalanching'') of runaway populations generated by processes (1) and/or (2) and/or others; this process will be effective in particular during the current quench phase and will continuemore » until the resulting runaway beam will carry essentially all of the remaining discharge current. In presently existing devices, possible avalanche factors of up to 10[sup 2]--10[sup 5] may be expected; in ITER, avalanche factors of up to 10[sup 10]--10[sup 15] -- if not properly suppressed -- are expected to lead to strong runaway beams in most disruptions, except those at particularly high densities. At the same time, avalanching will shift the main part of their energy spectrum down to relatively low energies around 10--20 MeV, and may sizably change the spatial distribution of the runaways.« less