Liquid jets for fast plasma termination in tokamaks

Recent simulations by Putvinskij et al. (PSI Conference, 1996) have shown that introducing impurities into the plasma in order to mitigate adverse disruption effects in ITER may actually be deleterious because of a potentially unwelcome phenomenon: generation of multi-MeV runaway electrons by the collisional avalanche mechanism (Rosenbluth, M.N., et al., in Fusion Energy 1996 (Proc. 16th Int. Conf. Montreal, 1996), Vol. 2, IAEA, Vienna (in press) Paper FP-26). The injection of a liquid hydrogen jet to deliver a massive density increase is proposed as a means of avoiding runaways, while providing the same beneficial effects as impurities. A discussion of many jet related topics, such as ablation/penetration, jet breakup time and stability, is presented. Owing to an ablation pressure instability, it is predicted that the jet will quickly break up into a regular chain of droplets with dimensions of approximately the size of the jet radius. It is found that while deep penetration in the plasma can easily be achieved, bubble growth and disruptive boiling (hashing) during the propagation in the vacuum gap between the nozzle exit and the plasma are the main processes limiting the jet survival time. Calculations indicate that for ITER reference parameters, the jet can remain coherent in vacuum for a distance similar to 1 m before disintegrating. On the basis of this present understanding, the prospect for the safe termination of ITER discharges by high density liquid jet injection appears promising.