Studies on Pellet Fueling of ITER-Like Plasmas

The paper reports on simulation of pellet-fueled plasmas in a fusion reactor. The simulations have been performed by means of the ASTRA transport code. We have studied physical modeling of pellet injection as well as the numerical conditions to resolve pellet injection correctly. As a first step the essential mechanisms for density control have been studied based on simplified assumptions with a generic source of additional heating. The experience gained has been used to simulate advanced scenarios including internal transport barriers. It has been confirmed that it is possible to drive the plasma of a next-generation tokamak into a high-Q regime and to maintain it in a steady-state regime. Nevertheless, the pellet injection parameters required are rather demanding and imply a significant technological improvement of pellet injectors. Those investigations represent an improvement of simulations done earlier with a control of the central density at constant profile.