Tokamak plasma edge modelling including the main chamber wall

Quantifying main chamber wall recycling, erosion and resulting material migration, at least on the basis of known or empirical far scrape-off layer (SOL) processes, is still highly uncertain, despite its relevance for ITER and fusion reactor design studies. This affects, for example, the design problem of first mirror performance of many optical diagnostics in the harsh ITER environment. Poor computational access is not least due to a fundamental technical limitation in apparently all current tokamak edge plasma fluid codes, which implicates a wide computationally unresolved gap between the outermost plasma layer treated in codes and the real vessel wall. We show how the current ITER version of the B2-EIRENE code (SOLPS-4.3) can be extended to cover also this far SOL, on the same footing as the rest of the plasma transport model. We discuss consequences of this new model for estimating plasma power and particle sink terms caused by a fairly realistic wall in ITER based on the conventional Bohm criterion along all plasma-wall interfaces. Corrections were made to this article on 14 July 2011. The authors have been assigned to the correct affiliations.