First results of CO_(2) dispersion interferometer on EAST tokamak

A dispersion interferometer(DI)has been installed and operates on the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak(EAST).This DI system utilizes a continuous-wave 9.3μm CO_(2)laser source to measure line-averaged electron densities accurately.In contrast to conventional interferometers,the DI does not require substantial vibration isolations or compensating systems to reduce the impact of vibrations in the optical path.It also employs a ratio of modulation amplitudes,ensuring it remains immune to the variations in detected intensities.Without a variation compensation system,the DI system on EAST reaches a density resolution of less than1.8×10^(-2)πrad and a temporal resolution of 20μs.The measurements made by the POlarimeterINTerferometer(POINT)system and the far-infrared hydrogen cyanide(HCN)interferometer are remarkably consistent with the DI’s results.The possibility of fringe jumps and the impact of refraction in high-density discharge can be significantly decreased using a shorter wavelength laser source.A rapid density change of 3×10^(19)m^(-3)during 0.15 s has been measured accurately in shot No.114755 of EAST.Additionally,the DI system demonstrates dependability and stability under 305 s long-pulse discharges in shot No.122054.

Comparison of different noble gas injections by massive gas injection on plasma disruption mitigation on Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak

Massive gas injection(MGI)is a traditional plasma disruption mitigation method.This method directly injected massive gas into the pre-disruption plasma and had been developed on the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak(EAST).Different noble gas injection experiments,including He,Ne,and Ar,were performed to compare the mitigation effect of plasma disruption by evaluating the key parameters such as flight time,pre-thermal quench(pre-TQ),and current quench(CQ).The flight time was shorter for low atomic number(Z)gas,and the decrease in flight time by increasing the amount of gas was insignificant.However,both pre-TQ and CQ durations decreased considerably with the increase in gas injection amount.The effect of atomic mass on pre-TQ and CQ durations showed the opposite trend.The observed trend could help in controlling CQ duration in a reasonable area.Moreover,the analysis of radiation distribution with different impurity injections indicated that low Z impurity could reduce the asymmetry of radiation,which is valuable in mitigating plasma disruption.These results provided essential data support for plasma disruption mitigation on EAST and future fusion devices.

Runaway electron dynamics in Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak helium plasmas

The generation of runaway electrons(REs)is observed during the low-density helium ohmic plasma discharge in the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak(EAST).The growth rate of hard x-ray(HXR)is inversely proportional to the line-average density.Besides,the RE generation in helium plasma is higher than that in deuterium plasma at the same density,which is obtained by comparing the growth rate of HXR with the same discharge conditions.The potential reason is the higher electron temperature of helium plasma in the same current and electron density plateau.Furthermore,two Alfvén eigenmodes driven by REs have been observed.The frequency evolution of the mode is not fully satisfied with the Alfvén scaling and when extension of the Alfvén frequency is towards 0,the high frequency branch is~50 kHz.The different spatial position of the two modes and the evolution of the helium concentration could be used to understand deviation between theoretical and experimental observation.

Prediction of multifaceted asymmetric radiation from the edge movement in density-limit disruptive plasmas on Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak using random forest

Multifaceted asymmetric radiation from the edge(MARFE) movement which can cause density limit disruption is often encountered during high density operation on many tokamaks. Therefore, identifying and predicting MARFE movement is meaningful to mitigate or avoid density limit disruption for the steady-state high-density plasma operation. A machine learning method named random forest(RF) has been used to predict the MARFE movement based on the density ramp-up experiment in the 2022’s first campaign of Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak(EAST). The RF model shows that besides Greenwald fraction which is the ratio of plasma density and Greenwald density limit, dβp/dt,H98and d Wmhd/dt are relatively important parameters for MARFE-movement prediction. Applying the RF model on test discharges, the test results show that the successful alarm rate for MARFE movement causing density limit disruption reaches ~ 85% with a minimum alarm time of ~ 40 ms and mean alarm time of ~ 700 ms. At the same time, the false alarm rate for non-disruptive and non-density-limit disruptive discharges can be kept below 5%. These results provide a reference to the prediction of MARFE movement in high density plasmas, which can help the avoidance or mitigation of density limit disruption in future fusion reactors.

Design, Analysis and R&D of the EAST In-Vessel Components

In-vessel components are important parts of the EAST superconducting tokamak. They include the plasma facing components, passive plates, cryo-pumps, in-vessel coils, etc. The structural design, analysis and related R＆D have been completed. The divertor is designed in an up-down symmetric configuration to accommodate both double null and single null plasma operation. Passive plates are used for plasma movement control. In-vessel coils are used for the active control of plasma vertical movements. Each cryo-pump can provide an approximately 45 m^3/s pumping rate at a pressure of 10^-1 Pa for particle exhaust. Analysis shows that, when a plasma current of 1 MA disrupts in 3 ms, the EM loads caused by the eddy current and the halo current in a vertical displacement event （VDE） will not generate an unacceptable stress on the divertor structure. The bolted divertor thermal structure with an active cooling system can sustain a load of 2 MW/m^2 up to a 60 s operation if the plasma facing surface temperature is limited to 1500 ℃. Thermal testing and structural optimization testing were conducted to demonstrate the analysis results.

EAST Cryogenic Supervisory and Control System Based on Delta-V DCS

The control system for the Experimental Advanced Superconductive Tokamak （EAST） cryogenic system is designed and constructed based on Delta-V DCS （Distribution Control System）, which consists of engineering workstations, operator workstations, application workstations, redundant controller units, input/output （I/O） cards and a redundant control network. Our task is to design a supervisory and control system to provide the operator interface for control and monitoring, sending alarms, archiving of selected signals, and other routines to analyze realtime and historic data. The hardware configuration, software structure and control algorithms are illustrated in detail in this paper. Hvpothetic oroblems and further research are also mentioned.

Design of Neutral Beam-Line of EAST

Neutral beam injector for EAST is designed to deliver deuterium beams with a power of 2 MW to 4 MW at an energy of 50 keV to 80 keV into the plasma with a beam dimension of 12 cm× 48 cm. Considering the beam generation and transmission, a columniform beam-line of Ф 250 cm × 400 cm is designed with a neutralizer, ion dump, calorimeter, bending magnet and cryopanels. The arrangement of the internal elements for the beam-line is reported. A rectangular sleeve coupled to the ion source is employed as the neutralizer. At the downstream of the neutralizer, a dipole magnet separates the residual ions from the beam passage with a reflection radius of 42 cm for the full energy particles. The calorimeter and the ion dump serve as high heat flux components, which will work as thermal inertia targets in the first phase of operation.

Design of real-time feedback control of vertical growth rate on EAST

Real-time feedback control of vertical growth rate,called gamma control,has been successfully applied to experimental advanced superconducting tokamak(EAST).In this paper,a new gamma control method is proposed to regulate the vertical growth rate,which is an estimator of plasma vertical instability.Thus,the gamma controller can be utilized to keep the tokamak plasma away from its unstable boundary.In this work,the main development process includes three steps:(1)real-time implementation of model-based vertical growth rate calculation,taking advantage of GPU parallel computing capability,(2)design of plasma shape response for dynamic shape control using a slight modification to the plasma boundary,and(3)development of a gamma control algorithm integrated into the EAST plasma control system(PCS).The gamma control was experimentally verified in the EAST 2019 experiment campaign.It is shown that the time evolution of the real-time vertical growth rate agrees with the target value,indicating that the real-time vertical growth rate can be regulated by gamma control.