Interaction of a liquid gallium jet with Isttok edge plasmas

The use of liquid metals as plasma facing components in tokamaks has recently experienced a renewed interest stimulated by their advantages in the development of a fusion reactor. Liquid metals have been proposed to solve problems related to the erosion and neutronic activation of solid walls submitted to high power loads allowing an efficient heat exhaust from fusion devices. Presently the most promising candidate materials are lithium and gallium. However, lithium has a short liquid state range when compared, for example, with gallium that has essentially better thermal properties and lower vapor pressure. To explore further these properties, ISTTOK tokamak is being used to test the interaction of a free flying, fully formed liquid gallium jet with the plasma. The interacting, 2.3 mm diameter, jet is generated by hydrostatic pressure and has a 2.5 m/s flow velocity. The liquid metal injector has been build to allow the positioning of the jet inside the tokamak chamber, within a 13 mm range. This paper presents the first obtained experimental results concerning the liquid gallium jetaplasma interaction. A stable jet has been obtained, which was not noticeably affected by the magnetic field transients. ISTTOK has been successfully operated with the gallium jet without degradation of the discharge or a significant plasma contamination by liquid metal. This observation is supported by spectroscopic measurements showing that gallium radiation is limited to the region around the jet. Furthermore, the power deposited on the jet has been evaluated at different radial locations and the surface temperature increase estimated.