Heating bulk ions in DEMO with ICRF waves

Abstract

Ion cyclotron resonance frequency heating (ICRF) is one of the auxiliary heating schemes presently envisaged for ITER and DEMO. In this paper we analyse the potential of ICRF waves to heat the fuel ions in DEMO. Our analysis is carried out for the EU DEMO design¹ (B = 6.8 T, I = 18.6 MA, R = 9.25 m, a = 2.64 m) optimized for a maximum pulse length of 2.3 hrs using the ICRF modelling codes PION and TORIC [2, 3] . We focus on second harmonic heating for tritium and fundamental minority heating of ³He with a few percent of ³He in a 50%:50% D-T plasma. The dependence of the ICRF characteristics and the ICRF-accelerated ions on the ICRF and plasma parameters is investigated, giving special attention to the DEMO design point at a plasma temperature of 30 keV and an electron density of 1.2 · 10²⁰ m⁻ ³.