Pellet fueling calculations in ITER

Technique difficulties and possible solutions to the existing pellet fueling technology for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) have been discussed by computing ablation rate using Kuteev's 2-D lentil model with considering the kinetic effects. The numerical integral results show the existing pellet injection technique will be very difficult to meet the core-fueling requirement for the reactor-relevant-plasma of ITER. As high as a pressure of 254 MPa should be applied to the pellet accelerator of 2-meters long single stage pneumatic gun, in order to accelerate the pellet of radius 0.5 cm to the velocity 24.27 km/s for reaching 100 cm penetration length. The comparisons of penetration depth dependence on the pellet velocity and radius between two typical ablation theories are made. Recent effort to improve the core fueling efficiency by injecting pellet from high field side (HLS) may devote a possible solution to the core fueling difficulty, and some associated problems have been discussed. (authors)