Dust investigations in TEXTOR: Impact of dust on plasma–wall interactions and on plasma performance

Dust will have severe impact on ITER performance since the accumulation of tritium in dust represents a safety issue, a possible reaction of dust with air and steam imposes an explosion hazard and the penetration of dust in core plasmas may degrade plasma performance by increasing radiative losses. Investigations were performed in TEXTOR where known amounts of pre-characterized carbon, diamond and tungsten dust were mobilized into plasmas using special dust holders. Mobilization of dust changed a balance between plasma–surface interactions processes, significantly increasing net deposition. Immediately after launch dust was dominating both core and edge plasma parameters. Remarkably, in about 100 ms after the launch, the effect of dust on edge and core plasma parameters was vanished: no increase of carbon and tungsten concentrations in the core plasmas was detected suggesting a prompt transport of dust to the nearby plasma-facing components without further residence in the plasma.

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