Particulate Contamination Within Fusion Devices and Complex (Dusty) Plasmas

TL;DR

This paper reviews dust contamination issues in fusion devices like ITER, exploring how complex plasma physics can aid in diagnosing and managing dust to improve safety and performance.

Contribution

It proposes using experimental observations of dust and plasma parameters to develop diagnostic methods for dust detection and removal in fusion reactors.

Findings

Dust contamination impacts diagnostic systems and safety in fusion devices.

Complex plasma physics offers insights into dust dynamics and control.

Potential diagnostic techniques for dust detection are discussed.

Abstract

Over the past decade, dust particulate contamination has increasingly become an area of concern within the fusion research community. In a burning plasma machine design like the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), dust contamination presents problems for diagnostic integration and may contribute to tritium safety issues. Additionally due to ITER design, such dust contamination problems are projected to become of even greater concern due to dust/wall interactions and possible instabilities created within the plasma by such particulates. Since the dynamics of such dust can in general be explained employing a combination of the ion drag, Coulomb force, and ion pre-sheath drifts, recent research in complex (dusty) plasma physics often offers unique insights for this research area. This paper will discuss the possibility of how experimental observations of the dust and plasma parameters within a GEC rf Reference Cell might be employed to diagnose conditions within fusion reactors, hopefully providing insight into possible mechanisms for dust detection and removal.