Demonstration of Tokamak Discharge Shutdown with Shell Pellet Payload Impurity Dispersal.

The first rapid tokamak discharge shutdown using dispersive core payload deposition with shell pellets has been achieved in the DIII-D tokamak. Shell pellets are being investigated as a possible new path toward achieving tokamak disruption mitigation with both low conducted wall heat loads and slow current quench. Conventional disruption mitigation injects radiating impurities into the outer edge of the tokamak plasma, which tends to result in poor impurity assimilation and creates a strong edge cooling and outward heat flow, thus requiring undesirable high-Z impurities to achieve low conducted heat loads. The shell pellet technique aims to produce a hollow temperature profile by using a thin, low-ablation shell surrounding a dispersive payload, giving a greatly increased impurity ablation (and radiation) rate when the payload is released in the plasma core. This principle was demonstrated successfully using 3.6 mm outer diameter, 40 µm thickness diamond shells holding boron powder. The pellets caused rapid (<10 ms) discharge shutdown with low conducted divertor heat fluence (∼0.1 MJ/m^{2}). Confirmation of massive release of the boron powder payload into the plasma core was obtained spectroscopically. Some evidence for the formation of a hollow temperature profile during the shutdown was observed. These first results open a new avenue for disruption mitigation research, hopefully enabling development of highly effective methods of avoiding disruption wall damage in future reactor-scale tokamaks.

Core tungsten radiation diagnostic calibration by small shell pellet injection in the DIII-D tokamak.

Injection of small (outer diameter = 0.8 mm) plastic pellets carrying embedded smaller (10 µg) tungsten grains is used to check calibrations of core tungsten line radiation diagnostics in support of the 2016 tungsten ring campaign in the DIII-D tokamak. Observed total brightness (1 eV-10 keV) and soft x-ray (1 keV-10 keV) brightness are found to be reasonably well (

Spatiotemporal Evolution of Runaway Electron Momentum Distributions in Tokamaks.

Novel spatial, temporal, and energetically resolved measurements of bremsstrahlung hard-x-ray (HXR) emission from runaway electron (RE) populations in tokamaks reveal nonmonotonic RE distribution functions whose properties depend on the interplay of electric field acceleration with collisional and synchrotron damping. Measurements are consistent with theoretical predictions of momentum-space attractors that accumulate runaway electrons. RE distribution functions are measured to shift to a higher energy when the synchrotron force is reduced by decreasing the toroidal magnetic field strength. Increasing the collisional damping by increasing the electron density (at a fixed magnetic and electric field) reduces the energy of the nonmonotonic feature and reduces the HXR growth rate at all energies. Higher-energy HXR growth rates extrapolate to zero at the expected threshold electric field for RE sustainment, while low-energy REs are anomalously lost. The compilation of HXR emission from different sight lines into the plasma yields energy and pitch-angle-resolved RE distributions and demonstrates increasing pitch-angle and radial gradients with energy.

Applying the new gamma ray imager diagnostic to measurements of runaway electron Bremsstrahlung radiation in the DIII-D Tokamak (invited).

A new gamma ray imager (GRI) is developed to probe the electron distribution function with 2D spatial resolution during runaway electron (RE) experiments at the DIII-D tokamak. The diagnostic is sensitive to 0.5-100 MeV gamma rays, allowing characterization of the RE distribution function evolution during RE growth and dissipation. The GRI consists of a lead "pinhole camera" mounted on the DIII-D midplane with 123 honeycombed tangential chords 20 cm wide that span the vessel interior. Up to 30 bismuth germanate (BGO) scintillation detectors capture RE bremsstrahlung radiation for Pulse Height Analysis (PHA) capable of discriminating up to 20 000 pulses per second. Digital signal processing routines combining shaping filters are performed during PHA to reject noise and record gamma ray energy. The GRI setup and PHA algorithms will be described and initial data from experiments will be presented. A synthetic diagnostic is developed to generate the gamma ray spectrum of a GRI channel given the plasma information and a prescribed distribution function. Magnetic reconstructions of the plasma are used to calculate the angle between every GRI sightline and orient and discriminate gamma rays emitted by a field-aligned RE distribution function.

An upgrade of the magnetic diagnostic system of the DIII-D tokamak for non-axisymmetric measurements.

The DIII-D tokamak magnetic diagnostic system [E. J. Strait, Rev. Sci. Instrum. 77, 023502 (2006)] has been upgraded to significantly expand the measurement of the plasma response to intrinsic and applied non-axisymmetric "3D" fields. The placement and design of 101 additional sensors allow resolution of toroidal mode numbers 1 ≤ n ≤ 3, and poloidal wavelengths smaller than MARS-F, IPEC, and VMEC magnetohydrodynamic model predictions. Small 3D perturbations, relative to the equilibrium field (10(-5) < δB/B0 < 10(-4)), require sub-millimeter fabrication and installation tolerances. This high precision is achieved using electrical discharge machined components, and alignment techniques employing rotary laser levels and a coordinate measurement machine. A 16-bit data acquisition system is used in conjunction with analog signal-processing to recover non-axisymmetric perturbations. Co-located radial and poloidal field measurements allow up to 14.2 cm spatial resolution of poloidal structures (plasma poloidal circumference is ~500 cm). The function of the new system is verified by comparing the rotating tearing mode structure, measured by 14 BP fluctuation sensors, with that measured by the upgraded B(R) saddle loop sensors after the mode locks to the vessel wall. The result is a nearly identical 2/1 helical eigenstructure in both cases.

Tokamak operation with safety factor q95 < 2 via control of MHD stability.

Magnetic feedback control of the resistive-wall mode has enabled the DIII-D tokamak to access stable operation at safety factor q(95) = 1.9 in divertor plasmas for 150 instability growth times. Magnetohydrodynamic stability sets a hard, disruptive limit on the minimum edge safety factor achievable in a tokamak, or on the maximum plasma current at a given toroidal magnetic field. In tokamaks with a divertor, the limit occurs at q(95) = 2, as confirmed in DIII-D. Since the energy confinement time scales linearly with current, this also bounds the performance of a fusion reactor. DIII-D has overcome this limit, opening a whole new high-current regime not accessible before. This result brings significant possible benefits in terms of fusion performance, but it also extends resistive-wall mode physics and its control to conditions never explored before. In present experiments, the q(95) < 2 operation is eventually halted by voltage limits reached in the feedback power supplies, not by intrinsic physics issues. Improvements to power supplies and to control algorithms have the potential to further extend this regime.

In situ "artificial plasma" calibration of tokamak magnetic sensors.

A unique in situ calibration technique has been used to spatially calibrate and characterize the extensive new magnetic diagnostic set and close-fitting conducting wall of the High Beta Tokamak-Extended Pulse (HBT-EP) experiment. A new set of 216 Mirnov coils has recently been installed inside the vacuum chamber of the device for high-resolution measurements of magnetohydrodynamic phenomena including the effects of eddy currents in the nearby conducting wall. The spatial positions of these sensors are calibrated by energizing several large in situ calibration coils in turn, and using measurements of the magnetic fields produced by the various coils to solve for each sensor's position. Since the calibration coils are built near the nominal location of the plasma current centroid, the technique is referred to as an "artificial plasma" calibration. The fitting procedure for the sensor positions is described, and results of the spatial calibration are compared with those based on metrology. The time response of the sensors is compared with the evolution of the artificial plasma current to deduce the eddy current contribution to each signal. This is compared with simulations using the VALEN electromagnetic code, and the modeled copper thickness profiles of the HBT-EP conducting wall are adjusted to better match experimental measurements of the eddy current decay. Finally, the multiple coils of the artificial plasma system are also used to directly calibrate a non-uniformly wound Fourier Rogowski coil on HBT-EP.

Effects of experimental hypogravity on peroxidase and cell wall constituents in the dwarf marigold.

Dwarf Marigolds grown from seed under experimental hypogravity are modified in lignin content, hemicellulose composition, and peroxidase activity. The two conditions used, clinostats and flotation, induced changes differing in magnitude but qualitatively similar. Most responses on clinostats required corrections for vertical axis rotational effects, thus limiting the value of these instruments in free-fall simulation. These findings extend earlier observations suggesting that increased peroxidase and decreased lignin are characteristic of growth under experimental hypogravity.