Wall conditioning for ITER: Current experimental and modeling activities

Wall conditioning will be required in ITER to control fuel and impurity recycling, as well as tritium (T) inventory. Analysis of conditioning cycle on the JET, with its ITER-Like Wall is presented, evidencing reduced need for wall cleaning in ITER compared to JET-CFC. Using a novel 2D multi-fluid model, current density during Glow Discharge Conditioning (GDC) on the in-vessel plasma-facing components (PFC) of ITER is predicted to approach the simple expectation of total anode current divided by wall surface area. Baking of the divertor to 350 °C should desorb the majority of the co-deposited T. ITER foresees the use of low temperature plasma based techniques compatible with the permanent toroidal magnetic field, such as Ion (ICWC) or Electron Cyclotron Wall Conditioning (ECWC), for tritium removal between ITER plasma pulses. Extrapolation of JET ICWC results to ITER indicates removal comparable to estimated T-retention in nominal ITER D:T shots, whereas GDC may be unattractive for that purpose.