Tokamak
Refuelling
Plasma limited by a divertor keeps losing plasma particles, which are
removed together with impurities by the divertor pumps. In a future fusion
power plant the "ash" from the fusion process, helium, will
also be removed in this way. There are various refuelling methods: gas
puffing from the edge of the vessel, neutral particle injection, and pellet
injection. In the latter, the hydrogen gas is cooled till it freezes and
pellets a few millimetres in diameter can be formed. After being accelerated
in gas guns or centrifuges, they are injected into the hot plasma, where
they again evaporate and the individual atoms are ionised.
As the pellets deposit the fuel at any selected location in the plasma, it is thus possible to change the density profile of the plasma. The pellet centrifuge on ASDEX Upgrade can inject up to 80 pellets per second into the plasma at a maximum velocity of 1200 metres per second – four times the sound velocity. Here it takes just one of the roughly 1 milligram pellets to refuel about one-third of plasma.
As the pellets deposit the fuel at any selected location in the plasma, it is thus possible to change the density profile of the plasma. The pellet centrifuge on ASDEX Upgrade can inject up to 80 pellets per second into the plasma at a maximum velocity of 1200 metres per second – four times the sound velocity. Here it takes just one of the roughly 1 milligram pellets to refuel about one-third of plasma.
View into the plasma of ASDEX Upgrade just as a pellet of frozen
deuterium is evaporating
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