Eects of plasma disruption events on ITER ®rst wall materials

In ITER, plasma disruption events may occur producing large fast thermal transients on plasma facing materials. Particularly important for the integrity of the ®rst wall (FW) are relatively ÔlongÕ duration o€-normal events such as plasma vertical displacement events (VDE) and runaway electrons (RE). An analytical methodology has been developed to speci®cally assess the e€ect of these events on FW plasma facing materials. For the typical energy densities and event duration expected for the primary and ba‚e FW, some melting and evaporation of the FW armor will occur without the bene®cial e€ect of vapor shielding, and the metallic heat sink may also be damaged due to over-heating. The method is able to calculate the amount of melted and evaporated material, taking into account the evolution of the evaporated and melted layer and to evaluate possible e€ects of local temporary loss of cooling. The method has been used to analyze the e€ects of VDE and RE events for ITER, to study recent disruption simulation experiments and to benchmark experimental and analytical results. Ó 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.