High-Heat-Flux Target Design for the Material Plasma Exposure eXperiment

Abstract

The Material Plasma Exposure eXperiment (MPEX) steady-state linear plasma facility is currently under design at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The facility proposes to produce ITER divertor-relevant plasma conditions with steady-state heat fluxes up to 10 MW/m² with ion fluxes up to 10²⁴/m²‧s. Plasmas will be produced from a helicon source with additional electron cyclotron and ion cyclotron heating, contained by superconducting magnets. MPEX will be capable of including targets that have been neutron irradiated from the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) in order to examine the effects of divertor-relevant plasma fluence on neutron-damaged materials. Targets can then be remotely transferred to an exchange chamber and moved into a handling station that is far from the MPEX magnets. Because of the high heat fluxes, the target must be actively cooled. Because the targets are activated, remote handling is required. The challenge of providing both active cooling and remote handling simultaneously has required a design and analysis effort that is the subject of this study.

Keywords:

• Plasma-material interactions
• linear plasma facilities
• high heat flux
• divertor
• Material Plasma Exposure eXperiment

Acknowledgments

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Fusion Energy Science under contract number DE-AC05-00OR22725, including an appointment to the ORNL Higher Education Research Experiences Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education.