Investigation of the power balance in advanced divertor configurations on MAST-U.

该项目涉及聚变能研究，它有可能从地球上无限的燃料供应中产生能量。英国是核聚变发展的世界领导者，它是政府当前工业战略的一个日益重要的组成部分。核聚变将是未来电力的主要来源，并且有可能在没有任何高放射性废物或二氧化碳排放的情况下实现这一目标。最成熟的核聚变方法是“托卡马克”，一种环形甜甜圈形状的腔室，热等离子体燃料被限制在其中。聚变发生所需的温度超过1亿摄氏度，这对处理反应堆边界处的热通量提出了重大挑战。从托卡马克装置排出的能量和粒子被引导到偏滤器和板上，这些板被设计用于处理从等离子体喷射出的重要能量负载。在下一阶段的设备中，这些可能高达每平方米1吉瓦;在聚变发电厂中甚至更高。因此，控制这些载荷对于发电厂的成功运行至关重要，因为这些载荷是无法忍受的，并且会导致材料失效。控制目标的功率载荷的一种方法是通过使用先进的偏滤器几何结构，例如X偏滤器和雪花，以及重要的Super-X，其目的是将功率分布在更大的几何面积上，并且还允许辐射更大量的功率。Super-X在这方面比其他人做得更好，用于这些实验的设施（MAST-Upgrade，由EPSRC资助的5500万英镑升级）将成为世界上第一个能够测试Super-X偏滤器的实验设施。这个项目要解决的一个关键问题是，过去对功率源和功率汇（称为功率平衡）的研究是否正确地解释了所有影响。该项目将考虑到过去被忽视的细节，以确保在MAST升级之前有一个强大的功率平衡方法。然后，该方法将用于确定MAST升级是否具有与MAST不同的功率平衡，即使使用常规偏滤器。该项目的主要目的是定量和实验确定Super-X偏滤器概念在减少托卡马克偏滤器的热量和粒子负荷方面的有效性。该项目的工作还将为欧洲聚变研究所资助的关于其他欧洲设施的研究提供信息。最后，该项目将更广泛地促进紧凑型聚变发电厂的发展，这是英国原子能机构研究战略的关键部分。

This project is concerned with fusion energy research, which has the potential to produce energy from limitless supplies of fuel on the Earth. The UK is a world leader in the development of fusion, and it is a growing part of the government's current industrial strategy. Fusion will be a major source of electricity well into the future, and has the potential to achieve this without any high-level radioactive waste, or carbon dioxide emissions.The most well-developed approach to fusion is the "tokamak", a ring doughnut shaped chamber in which hot plasma fuel is confined. The temperatures required for fusion to occur are in excess of 100 million degrees Celsius, providing a significant challenge to handle the heat flux at the boundary of a reactor. The power and particles exhausted from a tokamak are directed into the divertor and onto the plates, which are designed to handle the significant power loads ejected from the plasma. These could be up to 1 GW per square metre in next step devices at times; even higher in a fusion power plant. Control of this is therefore crucial to the successful operation of a power plant, as these loads are intolerable, and will lead to material failures.One means of controlling the power load to the target is through the use of advanced divertor geometries, such as X-divertor and Snowflake, and importantly Super-X, which aim to both spread the power over a larger geometric area, and also allow a greater amount of the power to be radiated. The Super-X does this to a greater extent than the others, and the facility used for these experiments (MAST-Upgrade, a £55M upgrade, funded by EPSRC) will be the firstexperimental facility in the world capable of testing the Super-X divertor. A key question to be addressed by this project is whether past studies of sources and sinks of power (known as power balance) properly accounted for all effects. This project will allow for details which have been overlooked in the past, to ensure that there is a robust method of doing power balance going forward to MAST-Upgrade. This method will then be used to determine whether the MAST-Upgrade has different power balance to MAST, even when conventional divertors are used. The primary aim of this project is to determine quantitatively and experimentally the effectiveness of the Super-X divertor concept in reducing the heat and particle loads to tokamak divertors. The work of this project will also inform studies on other European facilities, funded by EUROfusion. Finally, this project will contribute more generally to the development of compact fusion power plants, a key part of UKAEA research strategy.