Modelling the ITER glow discharge plasma

The ITER glow discharge cleaning (GDC) system (Maruyama et al., 2012) is aimed to prepare in-vessel component surfaces prior to the machine start-up. In order to assess glow discharge uniformity and wall coverage, thus conditioning efficiency of the system, a new 2D multi-fluid model has been developed (Hagelaar, 2012). In this work the model is compared with published experimental data on GDC wall ion fluxes in JET and RFX (Douai et al., 2013; Canton et al., 2013). The simulations of H₂-GDC in ITER for the case of 1 or 2 anodes indicate a good level of homogeneity of plasma parameters in the negative glow and of the wall ion flux in the common pressure domain for GDC: 0.1–0.5 Pa. Although the model geometry does not allow simulation of all seven ITER anodes operating simultaneously, the results can be extrapolated to the full system with an average ion current density of 0.21 A/m², which is comparable to JET (0.10 A/m²)