Modelling of plasma transport in tokamak scrape-off layers

• Promoter: Prof. Sven Van Loo
• Supervisor: Prof. Sven Van Loo
• Study programs: Master of Science in Engineering Physics, Master of Science in Physics and Astronomy, Master of Science in Teaching in Science and Technology (Physics and Astronomy), European Master of Science in Nuclear Fusion and Engineering Physics
• Location: Technicum, at home

In the next 30 years it is expected that the global energy demand will increase by 50%. Even with the growth in renewable energy this also means an increase of carbon emissions while governments across the world have pledged and prepared roadmaps towards a zero-carbon economy by 2050. Therefore, it is necessary to redouble our efforts towards large-scale, zero-carbon and safe energy supply solutions. One promising route is nuclear fusion.

Major progress has been made over the last decades and, within the last two year, a record amount of energy was produced at the Joint European Torus (JET) tokamak device while the WEST tokamak has been able maintain the plasma for 22 minutes. These two experiments are examples of magnetic-confinement fusion devices where a hot hydrogen plasma at high temperatures (~150 x 10⁶ K) is confined in a toroidal chamber by strong magnetic fields. Fusion plasmas suffer from global instabilities in the magnetic structure of the plasma. These magnetohydrodynamical instabilities are driven by changes in the plasma pressure on timescales of the order of 1 to 100ms and, when they occur near the plasma edge, in the so-called scrape-off layer (SOL), they are referred to as edge-localised modes (ELMs). ELMs are characterised by large, intermittent bursts of plasma particles and energy (between 5 to 15% of the total plasma energy) from the core confinement region toward the plasma facing components (PFCs) on the walls of the tokamak. This can result in significant erosion of divertor target and first wall. In severe cases, impurity generated by erosion may penetrate into the core plasma, leading to plasma termination.

The main goal of this thesis is to study the behaviour of plasmas instabilities in the a fusion plasma device. You will use the Vlasov-Poisson code kobra to simulate plasma transport in scrape-off layer during ELMs. The simulation results are compared to previously obtained results with a different code and further employed to study the erosion of PFCs. You will gain experience with the kinetic description of plasmas, numerical simulation techniques and its use in the development of nuclear fusion.