Diagnostics design for steady-state operation of the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator

The status of the diagnostic developments for the quasistationary operable stellarator Wendelstein 7-X (maximum pulse length of 30 min at 10 MW ECRH heating at 140 GHz) will be reported on. Significant emphasis is being given to the issue of ECRH stray radiation shielding of in-vessel diagnostic components, which will be critical at high density operation requiring O2 and OXB heating.

Diagnostic developments for quasicontinuous operation of the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator

The stellarator Wendelstein 7-X will allow for quasicontinuous operation with the duration only being limited to two 30 min discharges per day, at a continuous heating power of 10 MW electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH) at 140 GHz, by the capacity of the cooling water reservoir. This will result in high thermal loads on all plasma facing components of 50-100 kW/m(2) from radiation alone and of up to about 500 kW/m(2) on components additionally exposed to convective loads. In high density scenarios toroidally varying ECRH stray radiation levels of 50-200 kW/m(2) need to be coped with, requiring careful material selection and different shielding and hardening techniques. Furthermore, a gradual buildup of coatings on plasma facing optical components, which without any measures being taken, would lead to high transmission losses already within a few days of long pulse operation (equivalent to about 1 year of operation in pulsed devices like JET or ASDEX-upgrade) and therefore needs to be prevented as much as possible. In addition in situ cleaning as well as absolute calibration techniques need to be developed for all plasma facing optical systems. Here we report about some of our efforts to find, for various types of diagnostics, ways to cope with these adverse effects. Moreover, we give a few examples for individual diagnostic specific issues with respect to quasicontinuous operation, such as the development of a special integrator for the magnetic diagnostics as well as special interferometer types which can cope with unavoidable vibrations and slow path length changes due to, e.g., thermal expansion of the plasma vessel.

Optical design study of an infrared visible viewing system for Wendelstein 7-X divertor observation and control

For the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator, which will allow quasicontinuous operation (tau < or = 30 min) with 10 MW of electron cyclotron radiation heating power, a conceptual design study for an IR/visible viewing system (IVVS) has been elaborated. Ten such systems, as part of the machine protection system, will be required for real time monitoring of all ten discrete, water cooled divertor modules with high spatial (< 10 mm) resolution, in order to prevent local overheating of the target tiles, which could easily lead to their destruction. On the physics side, the systems will be used for divertor symmetry investigations by studying the power load distribution on all targets modules and by observing the island divertor plasmas in the light of H alpha, C II, and C III using the visible imaging section of the systems. The optics of the system can be divided into three parts: a mirror based optical head, creating an intermediate image, a Cassegrain telescope system, and individual lens based imaging optics adapted to the various detectors for IR (3-5 microm and 8-14 microm) and visible observations, with their optical light paths being separated by in-vacuum dichroic beam splitters.