Taming the Flame; Divertor Detachment Control in Tokamaks

By far the biggest challenge in fusion energy research is to maintain a high performance fusion plasma, while ensuring that the unprecedented exhaust of heat and particles does not damage the wall of the reactor. This can be done through active feedback control of the plasma.

Through this workshop we will try to tackle this important challenge by creating new insights in, and tools for, the control of the radiating plasma that will help us to establish an operating scenario that achieves both the required good confinement as well as the proper conditions at the plasma-wall interface. The workshop should lead to a single, coherent approach that will benefit from a multi-disciplinary interaction of scientists and engineers from different communities (materials, plasma and fusion physics, control engineering).

We strongly expect that bringing together plasma physicist and control engineers/theorist will help to find remedies for filling a number of important knowledge gaps on divertor detachment control. One of the envisaged outcomes of the workshop will be a white paper that describes the present status of the field, the open issues and knowledge gaps and a plan that will guide research in the years to come. We aim of getting this paper published in one of the leading journals in the field.