The ITER divertor concept

The ITER divertor must exhaust most of the alpha particle power and the He ash at acceptable erosion rates. The high recycling regime of the ITER-CDA for present parameters would yield high power loads and erosion rates on conventional targets. Improvement by radiation in the SOL at constant pressure is limited in principle. To permit a higher radiation fraction, the plasma pressure along the field must be reduced by more than a factor 10, reducing also the target ion flux. This pressure reduction can be obtained by strong plasma-neutral interaction below the X-point. Under these conditions Te in the divertor can be reduced to