Possible divertor solutions for a fusion reactor.: Part I. Physical aspects based on present day divertor operation1

With an anticipated power flux across the separatrix of up to 300 MW of an ITER-like fusion reactor, conventional measures of power spread lead to a peak power load at the target plates in the order of 30 MW m−2, far beyond the technically feasible limit for stationary operation. Radiative cooling by seed impurities appears to be the most promising plasma-physical option to reduce the target power load, but extrapolations of present experiments predict an only marginally tolerable increase of the plasma effective charge Zeff. Key points will be the achievement of very high electron densities, leading to more effective radiative cooling by δPrad/δZeff∝ne2 while keeping the edge temperature within its optimum range. This range is bounded from below by the H→L mode temperature threshold due to confinement requirements, whereas the upper boundary is given by the ideal ballooning stability limit which is connected to type-I ELM activity which may cause non-tolerable divertor heat loads. The completely detached H-mode (CDH) in ASDEX Upgrade demonstrates radiative H-mode operation within this operational range exhibiting high-frequent type-III ELMs and target power load in the order of 10% of the heating power. At present, open questions on high density reactor operation are related to radiative instabilities as well as edge transport enhancement and H-mode impairment observed in several tokamaks under high density conditions. Measures to overcome these detrimental effects will be investigated with improved divertor concepts in the near future. The possible problems connected to high density reactor operation can be relaxed, if the design of plasma facing components with higher heat flux endurance is successful.