Summary of fueling by pellet injection

Model-based studies were presented which indicated in all cases that shielding will occur, but there was not total agreement in these studies on the mechanism of the shielding. The data from the pellet ablation experiment on ORMAK was explained by considering the plasma electron flux, incident on the pellet surface, to create an ablated neutral cloud which self-consistently attenuates the incident electron flux. The lack of total agreement in the studies comes about when extending this to tokamak reactor plasmas. Various groups contended either that this mechanism would continue to dominate in reactor plasmas, or that it would be modified by a comparable heat flux from alphas, or that it would be modified somewhat by electrostatic shielding because of electron flux induced charge buildup on the pellet, or that it would be modified by ionization of the neutral cloud yielding a plasma cloud shield, or that this same plasma cloud would exclude magnetic field causing deflection of the incident electron flux and therefore additional shielding