First results on disruption mitigation by massive gas injection in Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research

Massive gas injection (MGI) system was developed on Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) in 2011 campaign for disruption studies. The MGI valve has a volume of 80 ml and maximum injection pressure of 50 bar, the diameter of valve orifice to vacuum vessel is 18.4 mm, the distance between MGI valve and plasma edge is ~3.4 m. The MGI power supply employs a large capacitor of 1 mF with the maximum voltage of 3 kV, the valve can be opened in less than 0.1 ms, and the amount of MGI can be controlled by the imposed voltage. During KSTAR 2011 campaign, MGI disruptions are carried out by triggering MGI during the flat top of circular and limiter discharges with plasma current 400 kA and magnetic field 2-3.5 T, deuterium injection pressure 39.7 bar, and imposed voltage 1.1-1.4 kV. The results show that MGI could mitigate the heat load and prevent runaway electrons with proper MGI amount, and MGI penetration is deeper under higher amount of MGI or lower magnetic field. However, plasma start-up is difficult after some of D(2) MGI disruptions due to the high deuterium retention and consequently strong outgassing of deuterium in next shot, special effort should be made to get successful plasma start-up after deuterium MGI under the graphite first wall.