Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Tokamak'

One of the least understood areas of the impurity transport and indeed any plasma particle or heat transport in general, is the turbulent transport. Extensive efforts of the fusion plasma community are focused on the subject of turbulent transport. Motivated by the fact that impurity transport is an important issue for the whole community and it is an area which needs fundamental research, we focused our attention on the development of turbulent transport models for impurities and their examination against experiments. In a collaboration effort together with colleagues (theoreticians as well as experimentalist) from different research institutes, we tried to find, through our models, physical mechanisms responsible for experimental observations. Although our main focus in this thesis has been on the impurity transport, we also tried a fresh challenge, and started looking at the problem of drift wave turbulent transport in a different framework all together. Experimental observation of the edge turbulence in the fusion devices show that in the Scrape of Layer (SOL: the layer between last closed magnetic surface and machine walls) plasma is characterized with non-Gaussian statistics and non-Maxwellian Probability Distribution Function (PDF). It has been recognized that the nature of cross-field transport trough the SOL is dominated by turbulence with a significant ballistic or non-local component and it is not simply a diffusive process. There are studies of the SOL turbulent transport using the 2-D fluid descriptions or based on probabilistic models using the Levy statistics (fractional derivatives in space). However, these models are base on the fluid assumptions which is in contradiction with the non-Maxwellian plasmas observed. Therefore, we tried to make a more fundamental study by looking at the effect of the non-Maxwellian plasma on the turbulent transport using a gyro-kinetic formalism. We considered the application of fractional kinetics to plasma physics. This approach, classical indeed, is new in its application. Our aim was to study the effects of a non-Gaussian statistics on the characteristic of the drift waves in fusion plasmas.

Ce travail de thèse porte sur le transport turbulent d'impuretés dans les plasmas de fusion

par confinement magnétique. C'est une question de la plus haute importance pour le développement

de la fusion comme source d'énergie. En effet, une accumulation d'impuretés au coeur

du plasma impliquerait des pertes d'énergie par radiation, conduisant par refroidissement à

l'extinction des réactions de fusion. Il est par contre prévu d'injecter des impuretés dans le

bord du plasma, afin d'extraire la chaleur par rayonnement sans endommager les éléments de

la première paroi. Ces contraintes contradictoires nécessitent un contrôle précis du transport

d'impuretés, afin de minimiser la concentration d'impuretés au coeur du plasma tout en la

maximisant au bord. Une très bonne connaissance de la physique sous-jacente au transport

est donc indispensable. L'effet de la turbulence, principal mécanisme de transport, sur les impuretés

est alors une question centrale. Dans cette thèse, un code numérique, AFC-FL, a été développé sur la base d'une approche ``fluide' linéaire pour la turbulence d'ondes de dérive. Il calcule les taux de croissance qui caractérisent la rapidité de l'amorçage des instabilités. L'analyse de stabilité est complétée par l'évaluation des taux de croissance en présence d'un gradient de densité, un cisaillement magnétique ou un nombre arbitraire de différentes espèces d'impureté. Les formules complètes du flux turbulent d'impuretés pour ces taux de croissance calculés des instabilités des ondes de dérive ont été dérivées. Un modèle de transport anormal qui nous permet d'étudier la dépendence du transport en fonction de la charge d'impureté a été développé. Ce modèle prend en compte les effets collisionnels entre les ions, l'impureté et les particules principales de plasma. Une telle dépendence du transport anormal en fonction de la charge de l'impureté est observée dans les expériences et il a été montré que les résultats obtenus sont en bon accord avec les observations expérimentales. Nous avons également étudié l'effet des impuretés sur le confinement de l'énergie dans les plasmas du tokamak JET. La modélisation de transport a été exécutée pour des plasmas avec injection de néon dans la périphérie du tokamak. Cette technique est utilisée afin d'extraire la chaleur par rayonnement sans endommager la paroi et pour réduire certaines instabilités (ELM). Des simulations du code RITM ont été comparées à des mesures effectuées lors d'expériences au JET. Il a été montré que l'injection de néon mène toujours à une dégradation du confinement par rapport aux décharges sans néon. Cependant, l'augmentation de la charge effective, en raison du presence du néon peut diminuer le taux de croissance d'autres instabilité (ITG) et amèliorer le confinement du coeur du plasma. Ce confinement amélioré du coeur peut alors compenser la dégradation au bord et le confinement global du plasma peut s'améliorer.

Doctorat en sciences, Spécialisation physique
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The concept of energy production through the fusion of two light nuclei has been studied since the 1950’s. One of the major problems that fusion scientists have encountered is the confinement of the hot ionised gas, i.e. the plasma, in which the fusion process takes place. The most common way to contain the plasma is by using at magnetic field configuration, in which the plasma takes a doughnut-like shape. Experimental devices of this kind are referred to as tokamaks. For the fusion process to proceed at an adequate rate, the temperature of the plasma must exceed 100,000,000C. Such a high temperature forces the plasma out of thermodynamical equilibrium which plasma tries to regain by exciting a number of turbulent processes. After successfully quenching the lager scale magnetohydrodynamic turbulence that may instantly disrupt the plasma, a smaller scale turbulence revealed itself. As this smaller scale turbulence behaved contrary to the common theory at the time, it was referred to as anomalous. This kind of turbulence does not directly threaten existents of the plasma, but it allows for a leakage of heat and particles which inhibits the fusion reactions. It is thus essential to understand the origin of anomalous turbulence, the transport it generates and most importantly, how to reduce it. Today it is believed that anomalous transport is due to drift-type waves driven by temperature and density inhomogeneities and the theoretical treatment of these waves is the topic of this thesis.

The first part of the thesis contains a rigorous analytical two-fluid treatment of drift waves driven solely by density inhomogeneities. Effects of the toroidal magnetic field configuration, the Landau resonance, a peaked diamagnetic frequency and a sheared rotation of the plasma have been taken into account. These effects either stabilise or destabilise the drift waves and to determine the net result on the drift waves requires careful analysis. To this end, dispersion relations have been obtained in various limits to determine when to expect the different effects to be dominant. The main result of this part is that with a large enough rotational shear, the drift waves will be quenched.

In the second part we focus on temperature effects and thus treat reactive drift waves, specifically ion temperature gradient and trapped electron modes. In fusion plasmas the α-particles, created as a by-product of the fusion process, transfer the better part of their energy to the electrons and hence the electron temperature is expected to exceed the ion temperature. In most experiments until today, the ion temperature is greater than the electron temperature and this have been proven to improve the plasma confinement. To predict the performance of future fusion plasmas, where the fusion process is ongoing, a comprehensive study of hot-electron plasmas and external heating effects have been carried out. Especially the stiffness (heat flux vs. inverse temperature length scale) of the plasma has been examined. This work was performed by simulations done with the JETTO code utilising the Weiland model. The outcome of these simulations shows that the plasma response to strong heating is very stiff and that the plasma energy confinement time seems to vary little in the hot-electron mode.