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

这个项目与聚变能研究有关，它有可能从地球上无限的燃料供应中产生能量。英国在核聚变发展方面处于世界领先地位，它是政府当前工业战略中日益重要的一部分。核聚变将在未来很长一段时间内成为主要的电力来源，并且有可能在不产生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。最发达的核聚变方法是“托卡马克”，一个环形的甜甜圈形状的腔室，热等离子体燃料被限制在里面。发生核聚变所需的温度超过1亿摄氏度，这给处理反应堆边界的热流带来了重大挑战。从托卡马克中排出的能量和粒子被引导到分流器和板上，这些板被设计用来处理从等离子体中喷射出的大量能量负荷。在下一步设备中，这些有时可以达到每平方米1吉瓦；在核聚变发电厂甚至更高。因此，控制这一点对发电厂的成功运行至关重要，因为这些负荷是无法忍受的，并将导致材料失效。控制目标功率负荷的一种方法是通过使用先进的分流器几何形状，如x -分流器和雪花，以及重要的Super-X，其目的是将功率分散到更大的几何区域，同时也允许更大的功率辐射。Super-X在这方面比其他设备做得更好，用于这些实验的设备（MAST-Upgrade，由EPSRC资助的5500万英镑升级项目）将是世界上第一个能够测试Super-X分流器的实验设备。这个项目要解决的一个关键问题是，过去关于能量来源和汇的研究（即所谓的能量平衡）是否恰当地考虑了所有的影响。该项目将考虑到过去被忽视的细节，以确保有一个强大的方法来进行功率平衡，以推进mast升级。然后，该方法将用于确定MAST- upgrade是否具有与MAST不同的功率平衡，即使使用常规转喷器。该项目的主要目的是定量和实验地确定Super-X导流器概念在减少托卡马克导流器的热量和粒子负荷方面的有效性。这个项目的工作也将为欧洲核聚变组织资助的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核聚变电厂的发展，这是UKAEA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.