Since the last IAEA-FEC in 2021, significant progress on the development of long pulse steady state scenario and its related key physics and technologies have been achieved, including the reproducible 403 s long-pulse steady-state H-mode plasma with pure radio frequency (RF) power heating. A thousand-second time scale (similar to 1056 s) fully non-inductive plasma with high injected energy up to 1.73 GJ has also been achieved. The EAST operational regime of high beta(P) has been significantly extended (H-98y2 > 1.3, beta(P) similar to 4.0, beta(N) similar to 2.4 and n(e)/n(GW) similar to 1.0) using RF and neutral beam injection (NBI). The full edge localized mode suppression using the n = 4 resonant magnetic perturbations has been achieved in ITER-like standard type-I ELMy H-mode plasmas with q(95) approximate to 3.1 on EAST, extrapolating favorably to the ITER baseline scenario. The sustained large ELM control and stable partial detachment have been achieved with Ne seeding. The underlying physics of plasma-beta effect for error field penetration, where toroidal effect dominates, is disclosed by comparing the results in cylindrical theory and MARS-Q simulation in EAST. Breakdown and plasma initiation at low toroidal electric fields (<0.3 V m(-1)) with EC pre-ionization is developed. A beneficial role on the lower hybrid wave injection to control the tungsten concentration in the NBI discharge is observed for the first time in EAST suggesting a potential way toward steady-state H-mode NBI operation.

Large edge-localized modes (ELMs) were mitigated by gravitational injection of lithium granules into the upper X -point region of the experimental advanced superconducting tokamak (EAST) device with tungsten plasma-facing components. The maximum ELM size was reduced by ∼70% in high β N H-mode plasmas. Large ELM stabilization was sustained for up to about 40 energy confinement times, with constant core radiated power and no evidence of high- Z or low- Z impurity accumulation. The lithium granules injection reduced the edge plasma pedestal density and temperature and their gradients, due to increased edge radiation and reduced recycling from the plasma-facing components. Ideal stability calculations using the ELITE code indicate that the stabilization of large ELMs correlates with improved stability of intermediate- n peeling-ballooning modes, due to reduced edge current resulting from the profile changes. The pedestal pressure reduction was partially offset by a core density increase, which resulted in a modest ∼7% drop in core stored energy and normalized energy confinement time. We surmise that the remnant small ELMs are triggered by the penetration of multiple Li granules just past the separatrix, similar to small ELMs triggered by deuterium pellet Futatani et al (2014 Nucl. Fusion 54 073008). This study extends previous ELM elimination with Li powder injection Maingi et al (2018 Nucl. Fusion 58 024003) in EAST because (1) use of small, dust-like powder and the related potential health hazards were eliminated, and (2) use of macroscopic granules should be more applicable to future devices, due to deeper penetration than dust particles, e.g. inside the separatrix with velocities ∼10 m s −1 in EAST.

Results from KSTAR powder injection experiments, in which tens of milligrams of boron nitride (BN) were dropped into low-power H-mode plasmas, show an improvement in wall conditions in subsequent discharges and, in some cases, a reduction or elimination of edge-localized modes (ELMs). Injected powder is distributed by the plasma flow and is deposited on the wall and, over the course of several discharges, was observed to gradually reduce recycling by 33%, and decrease both the ELM amplitude and frequency. This is the first demonstration of the use of BN for ELM mitigation. In all of these experiments, an Impurity Powder Dropper (IPD) was used to introduce precise, controllable amounts of the materials into ELMy H-mode KSTAR discharges. The plasma duration was between 10 s and 15 s, Ip=500 kA, BT=1.8 T, PNBI=1.6 MW, and PECH=0.6 MW. Plasma densities were between 2 and 3×1019 m−3. In all cases, the pre-fill and startup gas-fueling was kept constant, suggesting that the decrease in baseline Dα emission is in fact due to a reduction in recycling. The results presented herein highlight the viability of powder injection for intra-shot and between-shot wall conditioning.

We report observations from the DIII-D tokamak indicating that boron (B) powder injection in tokamak plasmas improves wall conditions similarly to glow discharge boronization (GDB). Isotopically enriched B powder (B-11> 95%) was introduced gravitationally in a sequence of H-mode plasma discharges at rates up to similar to 160 mg s(-1)for durations up to 3 s. Boron injection to cumulative amounts <= 0.1 g appeared to improve wall conditions similarly to boronization, with indications of reduced wall fueling, reduced recycling at the outer strike point and reduced impurity content at breakdown. Post-mortem analysis of graphite samples exposed to far scrape-off layer plasma fluxes during boron injection confirm the formation of a B-C layer, with average surface composition B:C similar to 1. The results suggest that injecting boron-rich powders in tokamak plasmas can effectively replenish boron films on carbon plasma facing components to improve wall conditions and extend the duration of the beneficial effects of GDB.

Type I edge-localized modes (ELMs) in the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) were completely suppressed via boron powder injection into the X-point region of an upper-single null configuration over a wide range of operating conditions (2.8 < Paux < 7.5 MW, 3.8 × 1019 < ne < 6 × 1019 m−3, RF-only and RF + NBI heating scenarios, both grad-B drift directions, and even He ion majority plasmas) (Sun et al. in Nucl. Fusion, 2020). A window of edge B concentration for stable long pulse operation was identified: too low and ELMs return, too high and the discharge suffers radiative collapse. The injection of boron powder above the minimum for ELM suppression coincided with the occurrence of an edge harmonic oscillation detected in magnetics (both on the high-field side and low-field side), in AXUV diodes near the upper X-point, divertor D $${\upalpha }$$ emission, and in a range of other diagnostics (Diallo et al. in: Proceedings of 2020 IAEA fusion energy conference, 2021). No harmonic oscillation was observed when ELMs were present, and stored energy was slightly increased at constant density during ELM suppression. Core tungsten emission during ELM suppression either increased or decreased relative to ELMy H-mode, but the W emission was maintained at acceptable levels. The threshold B injection rate was measured for several conditions, and found to increase with heating power. Li powder injection into comparable discharges also resulted in a short phase of ELM suppression, but density and stored energy both decreased due to the strong pumping effect of lithium; no edge harmonic oscillation was observed with Li injection, indicating that the ELM suppression mechanisms differ. The new set of B-seeded, ELM-suppressed discharges exhibited certain characteristics of quiescent H-mode (Burrell et al. in Phys Plasmas 8:2153, 2001), but did not require high shear, counter beams, etc. The wide operating window and compatibility with RF-only discharges paves the way for future experiments targeting long pulse H-mode discharges with complete ELM suppression.

The injection of boron (B) and boron nitride (BN) powders into ASDEX Upgrade H-mode discharges have demonstrated effective control of tungsten influx in low density/collisionality operational regimes, similar to conventional boronization methods. Sub-mm powder particles are gravitationally accelerated into the upper edge of a lower single null H-mode plasma with a boundary shape roughly conforming to the shape of the poloidal midplane limiters. Visible spectroscopy measurements at one of the outer limiter showed increases in both B and N signal levels, as well as elevated B levels in the divertor, and an increase in total radiated power by greater than a factor of two during BN injection. Globally the BN injection improved energy confinement by 10%-20%, associated with improvements in pedestal performance similar to gaseous N injection. Following conditioning discharges with B powder injection, three low gas-fueling discharges with magnetic perturbations for ELM suppression were successfully conducted. These first results suggest that the application of B containing powders can be used to both improve plasma performance in real-time, and to improve overall wall conditions for subsequent discharges.

Since the last IAEA Fusion Energy Conference in 2016, the EAST physics experiments have been developed further in support of high-performance steady-state operation for ITER and CFETR. First demonstration of a >100s time scale long-pulse steady-state scenario with a good plasma performance (H-98(y2) similar to 1.1) and a good control of impurity and heat exhaust with the upper tungsten divertor has been achieved on EAST using the pure radio frequency (RF) power heating and current drive. The EAST operational domain has been significantly extended towards a more ITER and CFETR related high beta steady-state regime (beta(p) similar to 2.5 and beta(N) similar to 1.9 of using RF and NB and beta(p) similar to 1.9 and beta(N) similar to 1.5 of using pure RF). A large bootstrap current fraction up to 47% has been achieved with with q(95) similar to 6.0-7.0. The interaction effect between the electron cyclotron resonant heating and two lower hybrid wave systems has been investigated systematically, and applied for the improvement of current drive efficiency and plasma confinement quality in the steady-state scenario development on EAST. Full edgelocalized mode (ELM) suppression using the n = 2 resonant magnetic perturbations has been achieved in ITER-like standard type-I ELMy H-mode plasmas with a range of the edge safety factor of q(95) approximate to 3.2-3.7 on EAST. Reduction of the peak heat flux on the divertor was demonstrated using the active radiation feedback control. An increase in the total heating power and improvement of the plasma confinement are expected using a OD model prediction for a higher bootstrap fraction. Towards a long-pulse, high bootstrap current fraction operation, a new lower ITER-like tungsten divertor with active water-cooling will be installed, together with further increase and improvement of heating and current drive capability.

Injection of solid pellets is a key element in several aspects of the operation of a magnetic confinement plasma reactor for fusion applications, including plasma fueling, control and diagnosis. This letter reports observations demonstrating that pellet ablation can begin outside the plasma boundary, by effect of supra-thermal ions, whose orbits, under appropriate conditions, can extend well into the vacuum region. The phenomenon was recorded during plasma discharges in the DIII-D tokamak, combining pulsed modulation of heating neutral beams, with high-frequency injection of sub-millimeter lithium pellets, and it is ascribed to the large fraction of trapped beam ions associated with counter current neutral beam injection. The effect was quantitatively evaluated by means of Monte-Carlo simulations of supra-thermal ion orbits, finding that the heat-deposition was of the order of 50-100 W mm(-2), in the region traversed by the lithium pellets before reaching the plasma boundary, which is consistent with the severe pellet deterioration observed for low velocity pellets.

In ASDEX Upgrade with full-tungsten wall, boronization is an important tool to control tungsten sources and allow reliable operation at low collisionality. The duration of the beneficial effects is limited by the erosion of the boron layer, in particular on the tungsten ion-cyclotron antenna limiters. We report results from experiments exploring injection boron-rich powders in tokamak plasmas as a way to replenish boron coating and extend the lifetime of boronization effects. Pure boron and boron nitride powders were introduced gravitationally in plasma discharges at rates up to 60 mg/s for durations up to 3 s. Boron injection with cumulative amounts >100 mg appeared to improve wall conditions similarly to boronization, with indications of reduced influx of oxygen and tungsten from the antenna limiter. Moreover, cumulative injection of 340 mg of B appeared sufficient to enable successful execution of low collisionality scenarios critically relying on freshly boronized walls.

Injection of low-Z granules into high performance discharges on DIII-D has been shown to promptly trigger Edge Localized Modes (ELMs) providing high-Z impurity control without significant plasma degradation. The ability to provide ELM triggering over a range of injection and discharge parameters suggests that the mechanical introduction of granules can be considered as an additional method of impurity control in ITER. Utilizing a spherically symmetric vapor shielding model for granule ablation, benchmarked with impurity granule injections on DIII-D, we simulate the injection of beryllium granules into ITER baseline discharges. By comparing the granule induced ELM triggering size required for deuterium and non-fuel pellets on DIII-D and cross-correlating with a previously simulated JOREK calcuation of D pellet size required for ELM triggering in ITER, we estimate that a beryllium pellet of 1.5 mm diameter should provide reliable ELM triggering on ITER. This size pellet, delivered at 200 m/s should penetrate 3.5 cm past the separatrix, solidly within the H-mode steep gradient region, a location found to be advantageous for ELM triggering with minimal pellet size.

Real-time lithium powder injection has been applied to long-pulse (> 30 s) H-mode plasmas in EAST. This replenishes the active lithium surface that is routinely consumed by plasma-wall interactions. The real-time injection of Li powder into long H-mode discharges effectively suppresses impurity influx and controls recycling on EAST, with an ITER-like tungsten upper divertor. With lithium powder injection, the concentrations W, Mo, and C were reduced by 50% compared to ELMy H-mode discharges. During lithium injection, two effects play a role in the suppression of impurities influx: a reduced divertor temperature and heat flux and hence reduced erosion, and impurity trapping via deposition of a Li film onto plasma-facing surfaces. The 'fresh' injected lithium replenishes the film deposited during daily morning evaporation, restoring the wall's pumping capability. Thus, a measurable reduction in the global recycling coefficient was observed.

We report the first successful use of lithium (Li) to eliminate edge-localized modes (ELMs) with tungsten divertor plasma-facing components in the EAST device. Li powder injected into the scrape-off layer of the tungsten upper divertor successfully eliminated ELMs for 3–5 s in EAST. The ELM elimination became progressively more effective in consecutive discharges at constant lithium delivery rates, and the divertor Dα baseline emission was reduced, both signatures of improved wall conditioning. A modest decrease in stored energy and normalized energy confinement was also observed, but the confinement relative to H98 remained well above 1, extending the previous ELM elimination results via Li injection into the lower carbon divertor in EAST (Hu et al 2015 Phys. Rev. Lett. 114 055001). These results can be compared with recent observations with lithium pellets in ASDEX-Upgrade that failed to mitigate ELMs (Lang et al 2017 Nucl. Fusion 57 016030), highlighting one comparative advantage of continuous powder injection for real-time ELM elimination.

Reduction of hydrogen content in deuterium-fueled fusion plasmas is important not only to avoid diluting reacting core deuterons but also so as to allow the optimization of hydrogen-minority-heating efficiency in those fusion devices which employ ion-cyclotron-radio-frequency heating systems. In EAST, the amount of hydrogen released from plasma-facing components has been shown to depend strongly on both their composition and their temperature. As measured by thermal desorption spectroscopy, the hydrogen inventory in graphite-used in EAST as lower divertor material-has been determined to be > 25 times larger than that of tungsten which comprises the upper divertor. This difference in hydrogen inventory is attributed mostly to the intrinsically porous nature of bulk graphite. Thus the main source of hydrogen release into EAST discharges was identified as the graphite tiles used in the lower divertor. The hydrogen content in EAST plasmas were clearly reduced by first employing a high-temperature vacuum baking of all graphite tiles and then renewing a 100-200 mu m thick SiC coating before an EAST experimental run campaign. Subsequent active surface conditioning of all wall components with elemental silicon and then with elemental lithium were seem to again reduce the plasma hydrogen content significantly-with lithium proving to be more effective than silicon. Combining these several techniques, H/(H + D) levels as low as similar to 3% have been achieved in EAST discharges. Additionally, the effects of lithium thickness on H surface implantation and retention has been re-examined semi-quantitatively using data from a previous run campaign. These data suggest that relatively thick Li films coated on the first wall can effectively isolate the rich source of hydrogen stored in the porous bulk of the underlying graphite from the deuterium-fueled plasma so as to minimize hydrogen release. Finally an operational maneuver whereby a diverted plasma is repetitively switched from an upper single null configuration to a lower single null configuration is presented. This switching maneuver has been shown to suppress hydrogen influx into a 35s-long EAST discharge by alternately mitigating the rise in divertor temperature.

Reduction of H content and particle recycling with mixed graphite and tungsten divertors for long-pulse and high performance plasma in EAST G.Z. Zuo1, J.S. Hu1,2*, Y.W. Yu1, Z.Sun1, R. Maingi4, H.D.Zhuang1, L.Wang1, X.C. Meng1,3, W. Xu1, D.K. Mansfield4, K. Tritz5, J.M. Canik6, B.Zhang1, C.Y.Xie1, M. Huang1, J.H.Wu1, J.G. Li1 and the EAST Team1 1Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, 230031 2CAS key Laboratory of Photovoltaic and energy conservation materials, Hefei 230031 3Department of Applied Physics, Hunan University, Changsha 410082 4Princeton University Plasma Physics Laboratory Princeton, N. J. 08543 5Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. 21211 6Oak Ridge National Laboratory Oak Ridge, TN 37830 zuoguizh@ipp.ac.cn

The use of lithium conditioning with multiple techniques, i.e. flowing liquid lithium limiters and lithium injection, has contributed to the achievement of H-mode discharges with greater than 100 s pulse length; new results are described from several of these techniques. First new results from two designs of a midplane flowing liquid lithium limiter and associated experiments in EAST are presented, comparing against the first generation results. Generation 2 used the same stainless steel-coated copper heat sink as used in Generation 1, with a thicker stainless steel protective layer, while Gen. 3 was fabricated from solid TZM, a molybdenum alloy. Gen. 2 and 3 were exposed to higher current plasmas and substantially higher auxiliary heating power than Generation 1, and plasma performance was generally improved. In addition ELM elimination was achieved with the use of real-time lithium injection in discharges that used the upper tungsten divertor, extending previous results with the lower carbon divertor. A marked reduction in the W sputtering source was also observed with Li powder injection. Finally the ability of lithium granules to trigger and pace ELMs is documented, along with the observation of a critical granule size threshold for ELM triggering as conceptually predicted by theory.

We report the first successful use of solid material injection, in powder form, to reduce core tungsten impurities in EAST discharges with tungsten divertor plasma-facing components. Tungsten is the leading plasma-facing material for use in ITER as well as future fusion devices. However, tungsten sometimes accumulates in the plasma core of fusion devices, which is an impediment to the achievement of high-power, long-pulse H-modes. In this work, tungsten impurity influx from the tungsten divertor was reduced by real-time injection of lithium powder into EAST discharges. An increase in stored energy and confinement accompanied the sharp reduction of core tungsten with real-time lithium powder injection in L-mode discharges. In H-mode discharges, real-time lithium powder injection reduced the tungsten core impurity emission while also mitigating ELMs. During powder injection, the divertor electron temperature was reduced, which reduced the tungsten source. The tungsten impurity emission remained low in discharges even after active lithium injection was terminated, a signature of improved and lasting wall conditioning in the tungsten divertor.

We present a device for controlled injection of a variety of materials in powder form. The system implements four independent feeder units, arranged to share a single vertical drop tube. Each unit consists of a 80 ml reservoir, coupled to a horizontal linear trough, where a layer of powder is advanced by piezo-electric agitation at a speed proportional to the applied voltage, until it falls into a drop tube. The dropper has been tested with a number of impurities of low (B, BN, C), intermediate (Si, SiC), and high Z (Sn) and a variety of microscopic structures (flakes, spheres, rocks) and sizes (5-200 μm). For low Z materials, drop rates ∼2-200 mg/s have been obtained showing good repeatability and uniformity. A calibrated light-emitting diode (LED)-based flowmeter allows measuring and monitoring the drop rate during operation. The fast time-response of the four feeders allows combination of steady and pulsed injections, providing a flexible tool for controlled-dose, real-time impurity injection in fusion plasmas.