Nonlinear Burn Control in Tokamaks using Heating, Non-axisymmetric Magnetic Fields, Isotopic fueling and Impurity Injection
A. Pajares and E. Schuster
Division of Plasma Physics (DPP) Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society (APS)
San Jose, CA, USA, October 31 - November 4, 2016
Abstract
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Plasma density and temperature regulation in future tokamaks such as
ITER is arising as one of the main problems in nuclear-fusion control
research. The problem, known as burn control, is to regulate the
amount of fusion power produced by the burning plasma while avoiding
thermal instabilities. Prior work in the area of burn control
considered different actuators, such as modulation of the auxiliary
power, modulation of the fueling rate, and controlled impurity
injection. More recently, the in-vessel coil system was suggested as a
feasible actuator since it has the capability of modifying the plasma
confinement by generating non-axisymmetric magnetic fields. In this
work, a comprehensive, model-based, nonlinear burn control strategy is
proposed to integrate all the previously mentioned actuators. A model
to take into account the influence of the in-vessel coils on the
plasma confinement is proposed based on the plasma collisionality and
the density. A simulation study is carried out to show the capability
of the controller to drive the system between different operating
points while rejecting perturbations.