Improved Heat and Particle Flux Mitigation in High Core Confinement, Baffled, Alternate Divertor Configurations in the TCV tokamak

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates significant heat and particle flux reduction in advanced divertor configurations of the TCV tokamak through nitrogen seeding, baffling, and geometry optimization, enhancing plasma confinement and divertor performance.

Contribution

It introduces and evaluates the effectiveness of X-divertor and X-point target configurations with baffling and nitrogen seeding in reducing heat fluxes in high confinement plasmas.

Findings

95-98% reduction in peak heat flux to the target

Enhanced core-divertor compatibility with advanced geometries

Effective mitigation of inter-ELM particle and heat fluxes

Abstract

Nitrogen seeded detachment has been achieved in the Tokamak a Configuration Variable (TCV) in advanced divertor configurations (ADCs), namely X-divertor and X-point target, with and without baffles in H-mode plasmas with high core confinement. Both ADCs show a remarkable reduction in the inter-ELM particle and heat fluxes to the target compared to the standard divertor configuration. 95-98% of the peak heat flux to the target is mitigated as a synergetic effect of ADCs, baffling, and nitrogen seeded detachment. The effect of divertor geometry and baffles on core-divertor compatibility is investigated in detail. The power balance in these experiments is also investigated to explore the physics behind the observed reduction in heat fluxes in the ADCs.