Several members of the Disruptions Group gave talks at the 46th ITPEA meeting on MHD, Disruptions, and Control (MDC) held at the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. Research scientist Robert Granetz and graduate student Henry Wietfeldt attended in-person while research scientist Alex Tinguely, postdocs Rishabh Datta and Alex Saperstein, and graduate students Zander Keith and Stuart Benjamin attended remotely. The ITPEA meetings are focused on the progress of joint international activities in preparation for ITER. Two Disruptions Group research scientists gave talks summarizing recent updates on joint international activities. Robert Granetz presented updates on the joint activity studying UFO disruptions and divertor hot spot modeling, and Alex Tinguely presented updates on the joint activity for runaway electron interactions with waves and MHD.

Four other Disruptions Group members gave talks on their recent work. Henry Wietfeldt gave a talk on his project comparing UFO disruptions on Alcator C-Mod and WEST through database studies. Rishabh Datta presented a talk on his work simulating runaway electron generation with self-consistent 3D MHD effects following SPARC disruptions. Zander Keith presented a talk on his work with Stuart Benjamin to validate a suite of tearing physics models with a multi-device database of NTMs. Zander and Stuart jointly answered questions about their work. Lastly, Alex Saperstein gave a talk on his work benchmarking 1D core transport simulations of radiative collapses with TORAX on C-Mod experimental data.

While at the conference, Robert and Henry toured the tokamak hall for COMPASS-U, a tokamak currently under construction at the Czech IPP. COMPASS-U will be quite similar to Alcator C-Mod, featuring a 5 T field on axis supplied by copper magnets. Robert met with some of the scientists and engineers designing COMPASS to provide insights based on his experience designing and operating C-Mod.

Picture credits: Stefan Jachmich / ITER
Henry Wietfeldt (left) and Bob Granetz (right) outside the Institute of Plasma Physics in Prague
Presenter Title
Rishabh Datta Combined MHD and runaway electron simulations of SPARC disruptions
Robert Granetz MDC-JA-4: UFO disruptions and divertor hot spot monitoring
Zander Keith Multi-device validation of tearing physics
Alex Saperstein Off-normal simulations of radiative collapse events in Alcator C-Mod
Alex Tinguely MDC-26 RE wave / MHD interactions
Henry Wietfeldt Characterization of UFOs on Alcator C-Mod and WEST