THE ITER DIVERTOR CONCEPT

The ITER divertor must exhaust most of the alpha particle power and the He ash at acceptable erosion rates. The high recycling regime of the ITER-CDA for present parameters would yield high power loads and erosion rates on conventional targets. Improvement by radiation in the SOL at constant pressure is limited in principle. To permit a higher radiation fraction, the plasma pressure along the field must be reduced by more than a factor 10, reducing also the target ion flux. This pressure reduction can be obtained by strong plasma-neutral interaction below the X-point. Under these conditions T-e in the divertor can be reduced to < 5 eV along a flame like ionisation front by impurity radiation and CX losses. Downstream of the front, neutrals undergo more CX or i-n collisions than ionisation events, resulting in significant momentum loss via neutrals to the divertor chamber wall. The pressure reduction by this mechanism depends on the along-field length for neutral-plasma interaction, the parallel power flux, the neutral density, the ratio of neutral-neutral collision length to the plasma-wall distance and on the Mach number of ions and neutrals. A supersonic transition in the main plasma-neutral interaction region, expected to occur near the ionisation front, would be beneficial for momentum removal. The momentum transfer fraction to the side walls is calculated: low Knudsen number is beneficial. The impact of the different physics effects on the chosen geometry and on the ITER divertor design and the lifetime of the various divertor components are discussed.