Experimental Investigation of Solid Hydrogen Pellet Ablation in High-Temperature Plasmas Using Holographic Interferometry and Other Diagnostics

摘要

The technology currently most favored for the refueling of fusion reactors is the high-velocity injection of solid hydrogen pellets. Design details are presented for a holographic interferometer/shadowgraph used to study the microscopic characteristics of a solid hydrogen pellet ablating in an approx. 1-keV plasma. Experimental data are presented for two sets of experiments in which the interferometer/shadowgraph was used to study approx. 1-mm-diam solid hydrogen pellets injected into the Impurity Study Experiment (ISX-B) tokamak at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) at velocities of 1000 m/s. In addition to the use of the holographic interferometer, the pellet ablation process is diagnosed by studying the emission of Balmer-alpha photons and by using the available tokamak diagnostics (Thomson scattering, microwave/far-infrared interferometer, pyroelectric radiometer, hard x-ray detector). (ERA citation 06:015063)