Electron Bernstein Wave (EBW) current drive profiles and efficiency for STEP

Electron Bernstein Wave (EBW) current drive profiles and efficiency for STEP

Electron Bernstein Wave (EBW) current drive profiles and efficiency for STEP 150 150 UKAEA Opendata
UKAEA-STEP-CP(23)05

Electron Bernstein Wave (EBW) current drive profiles and efficiency for STEP

The UK’s Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) reactor design program is now exclusively investigating concepts using microwave-based heating and current drive (HCD) systems. Electron Bernstein Wave (EBW) HCD is a relatively immature technology compared to Electron Cyclotron (EC) HCD but is of interest due to the promise of high current drive efficiency and access to dense plasmas at low magnetic fields where EC is cut off. This presentation will discuss estimated EBW current drive efficiency on STEP. GENRAY and CQL3D were used to estimate the current drive profiles and normalised current drive efficiency ζ_CD=32.7 * I_CD[A] * ne[10^20m^−3] * R[m] / P[W] * Te[keV] for several reactor concepts with varying temperature, density, geometry and magnetic field. ζ_CD>1.0 was readily found for ρ=0.65 − 0.9 while ζ_CD>0.5 was found for ρ≥0.5. The absorption location of the EBW exhibits a large shift away from the cyclotron harmonic due to Doppler broadening of the resonance at finite temperature. Estimations of the shift from these scans is being used to develop a fast model to support integrated scenario modelling in the neighbourhood of the preferred concept.

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21ST JOINT WORKSHOP ON ELECTRON CYCLOTRON EMISSION (ECE) AND ELECTRON CYCLOTRON RESONANCE HEATING (ECRH), ITER Headquarters, 20-24 June 2022