Differ researcher Thomas Bosman will defend his PhD thesis titled: 'Density profile and heat-exhaust control in nuclear fusion devices: Development of control methods in view of the operation of fusion power plants'.
- Date: 30 April 2025, 16:00h
- Location: Campus TU/e: Atlas 0.710
- Promotor: Marco de Baar
- Co-promotor: Matthijs van Berkel
Summary:
Nuclear fusion energy stands as a promising contributor to a sustainable energy supply,
offering an inherently safe, reliable, and on-demand power source that can be dispatched
close to the point of use. Among the various designs under development, the tokamak,
a magnetic confinement device, currently leads as the most advanced approach for
a commercial fusion reactor. However, several challenges remain towards the reliable
operation of power-producing tokamaks, particularly in the area of feedback control. This
thesis seeks to address two unresolved challenges associated with the control of nuclear
fusion reactors. The first is the control of the core particle density profile with pellet
injection. In tokamak reactors, core density must be carefully controlled to maximize
fusion power while avoiding density limits that risk a loss of plasma confinement and
subsequent reactor damage. This requires managing the core density profile using pellet
injection, as other fueling methods are expected to be inefficient in future reactors.
However, a controller that can regulate the density profile of a tokamak using multiple
pellet injectors has not yet been developed.
The second problem that is addressed is the exhaust of heat and particles. In a
fusion power plant, hundreds of megawatts of power will continuously be leaving the
core plasma. They will be transported via a narrow region at the edge, called the Scrape-off
layer (SOL), to a dedicated region of the reactor called the divertor. Left unabated, the heat
and particle fluxes will surpass the thermo-mechanical limits of the divertor plates. Therefore,
significant losses in particles, energy, and momentum fluxes have to be induced in the SOL.
A promising solution to the this problem is the operation in the detached plasma regime, which
is achieved by injecting impurity gas in the divertor region of the tokamak. Operating in the
detached regime while maintaining the core performance requires feedback controllers that
regulate the amount of injected gas. However, our understanding of the exhaust dynamics and
the development of exhaust controllers is still in its infancy.
Read more on the TU/e website.
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