Performance projections for the lithium tokamak experiment (LTX)

• Published in: Nuclear fusion 2009-05, Vol.49 (5), p.055014-055014 (7)
• Main Authors: Majeski, R, Berzak, L, Gray, T, Kaita, R, Kozub, T, Levinton, F, Lundberg, D.P, Manickam, J, Pereverzev, G.V, Snieckus, K, Soukhanovskii, V, Spaleta, J, Stotler, D, Strickler, T, Timberlake, J, Yoo, J, Zakharov, L
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Exact sciences and technology; Magnetic confinement and equilibrium; Physics; Physics of gases, plasmas and electric discharges; Physics of plasmas and electric discharges; Plasma heating (beam injection, radio-frequency and microwave, ohmic, icr, ecr and current drive heating); Plasma production and heating; Plasma properties; Tokamaks; Transport properties
• ISSN: 0029-5515; 1741-4326
• DOI: 10.1088/0029-5515/49/5/055014

Use of a large-area liquid lithium limiter in the CDX-U tokamak produced the largest relative increase (an enhancement factor of 5–10) in Ohmic tokamak confinement ever observed. The confinement results from CDX-U do not agree with existing scaling laws, and cannot easily be projected to the new lithium tokamak experiment (LTX). Numerical simulations of CDX-U low recycling discharges have now been performed with the ASTRA-ESC code with a special reference transport model suitable for a diffusion-based confinement regime, incorporating boundary conditions for nonrecycling walls, with fuelling via edge gas puffing. This model has been successful at reproducing the experimental values of the energy confinement (4–6 ms), loop voltage (