FIREFELM · Mastering the energetic particle distribution in a magnetohydrodynamic active plasma
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2017-08-01 → 2019-08-31
- EU contribution
- €158,122
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Mastering the energetic particle distribution in a magnetohydrodynamic active plasma
The growing demand for cheap and sustainable energy constitutes one of the major challenge of our century. Nuclear fusion has the potential to cover the energy needs of the world’s population and can provide a clean, secure and viable option to replace fossil energy sources. Fusion is a virtually unlimited energy source as sufficient fuel (deuterium) is available in our oceans and tritium can be retained from lithium, which is available in our Earth’s crust. A promising route to a nuclear fusion power plant is the use of toroidal magnetic fields in order to confine a high-temperature plasma with fusion-relevant properties, i.e. sufficient particle density and temperature. A large international effort is undertaken to develop the ITER project. Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities are a universal phenomenon in laboratory as well as astrophysical plasmas. An example for such an instability is the edge localized mode (ELM) which occurs at the plasma edge of a fusion plasma and ejects a jet of hot plasma similar to solar flares on the edge of the Sun. ELMs appear during a mode of tokamak operation in which energy is retained more effectively and pressure builds up at the edge of the plasma. This mode of operation is also called high confinement mode (H-mode) and is the operational regime foreseen for the next-step fusion device ITER. ELMs eject particles and energy from the plasma thus leading to a transient degradation of the plasma edge and a deterioration of plasma confinement. The successful realization of fusion relies, therefore, in a thorough understanding of edge stability and ELM control. For future fusion devices, the control or even full suppression of ELMs is mandatory. The overall objective of this project is to advance in the understanding of ELMs and the impact they have on plasma transport.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
FIREFELM – fast ions, radial electric field and edge localized mode – is an interdisciplinary project aimed at getting a better understanding of the basic mechanisms responsible for the energetic particle transport in fusion as well as in astrophysical plasmas making use of advanced diagnostic systems and state-of-the-art numerical tools. The main goal of this proposal is to control the dynamics between energetic particles, radial electric fields and magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) perturbations in the plasma edge and its impact on the overall plasma confinement. The mechanisms underlying the fast ion transport induced by MHD instabilities, such as Edge Localized Modes (ELMs) and externally applied Magnetic Perturbations (MPs) will be studied through innovative diagnosis techniques developed at the University of Seville and the Centro Nacional de Aceleradores (CNA) in Seville, Spain and employed in different fusion devices such as ASDEX Upgrade (Germany) and MAST Upgrade (UK). This project consists of three main research lines which follow a bottom up approach: the first research line is dedicated to fusion technology and aims at the development of the new generation of fast ion loss detectors (FILDs). New FILD systems will be able to provide absolute fluxes of escaping ions, their poloidal distribution and critical information on the wave-particle momentum and energy exchange. These advanced FILDs will be employed to characterize the interdependence between fast ion losses and radial electric fields and to study the role of fast ions in plasma edge stability and in the ELM cycle. Unraveling the interaction between MHD instabilities and energetic particles in tokamak plasmas will advance our understanding of the observed particle acceleration and transport in the solar corona and help to identify similarities between tokamak and astrophysical plasmas. This third research line will shed light on the anomalous heating of the solar corona and generation of the solar wind.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSIDAD DE SEVILLA · SevillaCoordinatorSpain
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union