T-12 divertor experiment

In designing tokamak devices and reactors, in the last few years, the use of elongated-cross-section plasma discharges has been proposed to improve the economic and physical parameters. Application of a quadrupole poloidal magnetic field necessary for sustaining the elongated discharge cross-section serves, in this case, to create the magnetic configuration of an axisymmetric poloidal divertor. To-day, the creation of such a combination, including an elongated plasma cross-section and a divertor and using the outer poloidal magnetic field coils, seems to be the most reasonable approach, from the point of view of design and technology. Such a divertor was produced and studied at the T-12 tokamak. A stable equilibrium configuration of a finger-ring tokamak with a divertor has been produced by superposing the magnetic fields of the plasma current, the external quadrupole coils and the copper shell currents; the reactor blanket can fulfil the function of the latter. It is shown that both a symmetric magnetic configuration with two divertors and a droplet configuration with a single divertor may be realized by controlling the plasma column position with respect to the equatorial plane. The stability of the plasma column against vertical displacement depends on this position and the distance between the separatrix points. Vertical instability stabilization has been observed. The divertor layer efficiently screens the plasma from the impurity influx from the wall and unloads the wall from particle and energy fluxes. The results obtained from the tokamak T-12 experiment have demonstrated the capability of a system with outer poloidal field coils and a copper shell providing an elongated-cross-section plasma column with poloidal divertors. (author)