Pellet injector development at ORNL

Plasma fueling systems for magnetic confinement experiments are under development at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). ORNL has recently provided a four-shot tritium pellet injector with up to 4-mm-diam capability for the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR). This injector, which is based on the in situ condensation technique for pellet formation, features three single-stage gas guns that have been qualified in deuterium at up to 1.7 km/s and a two-stage light gas gun driver that has been operated at 2.8-km/s pellet speeds for deep penetration in the high-temperature TFTR supershot regime. Performance improvements to the centrifugal pellet injector for the Tore Supra tokamak are being made by modifying the storage-type pellet feed system, which has been redesigned to improve the reliability of delivery of pellets and to extend operation to longer pulse durations (up to 400 pellets). Two-stage light gas guns and electron-beam (e-beam) rocket accelerators for speeds in the range from 2 to 10 km/s are also under development. A repeating, two-stage light gas gun that has been developed can accelerate low-density plastic pellets at a 1-Hz repetition rate to speeds of 3 km/s. In a collaboration with ENEA-Frascati, a test facility has been prepared to study repetitive operation of a two-stage gas gun driver equipped with an extrusion-type deuterium pellet source. Extensive testing of the e-beam accelerator has demonstrated a parametric dependence of propellant burn velocity and pellet speed, in accordance with a model derived from the neutral gas shielding theory for pellet ablation in a magnetized plasma