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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
New X-ray imaging for ITER-supporting tokamaks
As researchers continue to seek ways to better understand the plasma inside fusion machines to fully harness fusion energy, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory is leading a project to provide new X-ray imaging systems to two international tokamak projects: WEST, in southern France, and JT-60SA, in Japan—both of which are designed to support the development of ITER.
Sophie Blondel, Karl D. Hammond, Lin Hu, Dimitrios Maroudas, Brian D. Wirth
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 1 | January 2017 | Pages 22-35
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST16-112
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We provide a description of the dependence on surface crystallographic orientation and temperature of the segregation of helium implanted with energies consistent with low-energy plasma exposure to tungsten surfaces. Here, we describe multiscale modeling results based on a hierarchical approach to scale bridging that incorporates atomistic studies based on a reliable interatomic potential to parameterize a spatially dependent drift-diffusion-reaction cluster-dynamics code. An extensive set of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations has been performed at 933 K and/or 1200 K to determine the probabilities of desorption and modified trap mutation that occurs as small, mobile Hen (1 ≤ n ≤ 7) clusters diffuse from the near-surface region toward surfaces of varying crystallographic orientation due to an elastic interaction force that provides the thermodynamic driving force for surface segregation. These near-surface cluster dynamics have significant effects on the surface morphology, the near-surface defect structures, and the amount of helium retained in the material upon plasma exposure, for which we have developed an extensive MD database of cumulative evolution during high-flux helium implantation at 933 K, which we compare to our properly parameterized cluster-dynamics model. This validated model is then used to evaluate the effects of temperature on helium retention and subsurface helium clustering.