Adjoint Monte Carlo simulation of fusion product activation probe experiment in ASDEX Upgrade tokamak

S. Äkäslompolo, G. Bonheure, G. Tardini, T. Kurki-Suonio, Asdex Upgrade Team The Asdex Upgrade Team

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The activation probe is a robust tool to measure flux of fusion products from a magnetically confined plasma. A carefully chosen solid sample is exposed to the flux, and the impinging ions transmute the material making it radioactive. Ultra-low level gamma-ray spectroscopy is used post mortem to measure the activity and, thus, the number of fusion products. This contribution presents the numerical analysis of the first measurement in the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak, which was also the first experiment to measure a single discharge. The ASCOT suite of codes was used to perform adjoint/reverse Monte Carlo calculations of the fusion products. The analysis facilitates, for the first time, a comparison of numerical and experimental values for absolutely calibrated flux. The results agree to within a factor of about two, which can be considered a quite good result considering the fact that all features of the plasma cannot be accounted in the simulations.Also an alternative to the present probe orientation was studied. The results suggest that a better optimized orientation could measure the flux from a significantly larger part of the plasma. A shorter version of this contribution is due to be published in PoS at: 1st EPS conference on Plasma Diagnostics.

Original languageEnglish
Article numberP10012
JournalJournal of Instrumentation
Volume10
Issue number10
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 9 Oct 2015

Keywords

  • Nuclear instruments and methods for hot plasma diagnostics
  • Plasma diagnostics - charged-particle spectroscopy
  • Plasma diagnostics - probes
  • Simulation methods and programs

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