Consideration of neutral beam prompt loss in the design of a tokamak helicon antenna

• Neutral beam prompt losses place appreciable power on an in-vessel tokamak antenna.
• Simulations predict prompt loss power and inform protective tile design.
• Experiments confirm the validity of the prompt loss simulations.

Neutral beam prompt losses (injected neutrals that ionize such that their first poloidal transit intersects with the wall) can put appreciable power on the outer wall of tokamaks, and this power may damage the wall or other internal components. These prompt losses are simulated including a protruding helicon antenna installation in the DIII-D tokamak and it is determined that 160 kW of power will impact the antenna during the injection of a particular neutral beam. Protective graphite tiles are designed in response to this modeling and the wall shape of the installed antenna is precisely measured to improve the accuracy of these calculations. Initial experiments confirm that the antenna component temperature increases according to the amount of neutral beam energy injected into the plasma. In this case, only injection of beams that are aimed counter to the plasma current produce an appreciable power load on the outer wall, suggesting that the effect is of little concern for tokamaks featuring only co-current neutral beam injection. Incorporating neutral beam prompt loss considerations into the design of this in-vessel component serves to ensure that adequate protection or cooling is provided.

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