Characterization of Heat Loads From Mitigated and Unmitigated VDEs in DIII-D

The characterization and study of tokamak disruption heat loads is important for predicting wall lifetime in future tokamaks and for designing disruption mitigation systems [1]. Intentional vertical displacement events (VDEs) are an excellent way to study disruption heat loads because they (a) serve as a near worst-case scenario for disruptions heat loads, (b) can be created reliably with repeatable timing, and (c) can be made to move into the lower divertor where good diagnostic coverage exists in DIII-D [2]. The plasmas studied here are lower single null (LSN) shapes heated with 3.5 MW of neutral beam power, giving a total stored energy of