Survivability of dust in tokamaks: dust transport in the divertor sheath

Abstract

The survivability of dust being transported in the magnetized sheath near the divertor plate of a tokamak and its impact on the desired balance of erosion and redeposition for a steady-state reactor are investigated. Two different divertor scenarios are considered. The first is characterized by an energy flux perpendicular to the plate $q_0\simeq 1$ MW/m$^2$ typical of current short-pulse tokamaks. The second has $q_0\simeq 10$ MW/m$^2$ and is relevant to long-pulse machines like ITER or DEMO. It is shown that micrometer dust particles can survive rather easily near the plates of a divertor plasma with $q_0\simeq 1$ MW/m$^2$ because thermal radiation provides adequate cooling for the dust particle. On the other hand, the survivability of micrometer dust particles near the divertor plates is drastically reduced when $q_0\simeq 10$ MW/m$^2$. Micrometer dust particles redeposit their material non-locally, leading to a net poloidal mass migration across the divertor. Smaller particles (with radius $\sim 0.1$ $\mu$m) cannot survive near the divertor and redeposit their material locally. Bigger particle (with radius $\sim 10$ $\mu$m) can instead survive partially and move outside the divertor strike points, thus causing a net loss of divertor material to dust accumulation inside the chamber and some non-local redeposition. The implications of these results for ITER are discussed.