Plasma-wall impurity experiments in ISX-A

The ISX-A was a tokamak designed for studying plasma-wall interactions and plasma impurities. It fulfilled this role quite well, producing reliable and reproducible plasmas which had currents up to 175 kA and energy containment times up to 30 ms. With discharge precleaning, Zsub(eff) was as low as 1.6; with titanium evaporation. Zsub(eff) approached 1.0. Values of Zsub(eff) > approximately 2.0 were found to be proportional to residual impurity gases in the vacuum system immidiately following a discharge. However, there was no clear dependence of Zsub(eff) on base pressure. Stainless steel limiters were used in most of the ISX-A experiments. Upon introducing carbon limiters into the vacuum system, Zsub(eff) increased to 5.6. After twelve days of clean-up with tokamak discharges, during which time Zsub(eff) steadily decreased, the carbon limiters tended to give slightly higher values of Zsub(eff) than stainless steel limiters. Injection of <1016 atoms of tungsten into discharges caused the power incident on the wall to double and the electron temperature profile to become hollow. (Auth.)