EFDA-JET-CP(03)01/21

Experimental Comparison of Different Configurations of Injection for Pellet Fuelling on JET

The capability of frozen hydrogenic pellet injection to reach high density together with high confinement regimes is of crucial interest for ITER. Furthermore, the associated good fuelling efficiency is important to the tritium cycle, allowing its inventory in the machine to be minimised. However, since the first demonstration in ASDEX-Upgrade that the ablated matter from the pellets experiences a fast drift in the direction of increasing major radius, the optimisation of the injection configuration is still an important issue. The "standard" Low Field Side (LFS) injection is clearly the worst situation since the drift expels the matter out of the discharge. In JET, a first guide tube system has been installed in 1999 to convey the pellets to the High Field Side (HFS) to take advantage of the favourable drift. The injection system has been completed recently with another guide tube, hereafter referred to as Vertical High Field Side (VHFS). Due to larger radii of curvature and more vertical injection directed towards the plasma centre, pellets were expected to be launched at higher speed and to avoid a trajectory tangential to the magnetic surfaces at large minor radii, as was the case with the first track. In this paper, results of first experiments aiming to compare the three available configurations are presented.
Name Size  
EFDC030121 893.83 Kb