The “Disruption Strategies” is a multi-year grant funded by Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS®) and structured into two main pillars that exchange resources and analysis information: (1) Prediction and Avoidance (PA) and (2) Scoping, Management and Mitigation (SMM). Both pillars include tasks aimed at delivering a plan for disruptions on ARC™.
Goal of the PA pillar is to lead the design of a flexible framework for continuous monitoring of the disruptivity and exception handling, to operate SPARC® inside its controllability boundaries. The SMM pillar focuses on scoping analysis to inform the Disruption Mitigation System (DMS) design, understanding post-disruption damage, optimizing mitigation, and simulating, diagnosing, and preventing Runaway Electrons (REs) with and without the RE Mitigation Coil (REMC). Examples of activities proposed under the ARC label include scoping of the ARC Vacuum Vessel (VV) via 3D MHD modeling, addressing transferability of developed tools from SPARC to ARC, and projecting the RE parameter/existence space and assessing requirements for the ARC REMC.
The following research objectives are under development, as funded by this grant:
Database & Analysis
- Develop post-shot analysis tools for disruption studies
- Generate disruptivity maps, scalings, and statistics from existing device data
- Refine disruption frequency estimates and false positive/negative rates
Disruption ALGorithms (DALG) Software System
- Implement physics-based and ML solutions for disruption prediction
- Design DMS trigger algorithms and threshold-based warning systems
- Develop proximity-to-instability metrics and tearing mode onset prediction
Computational Development
- Apply 3D MHD modeling for domain adaptation to improve prediction accuracy
- Support off-normal event simulations for MOSAIC Pulse Simulator integration
System Integration
- Ensure software compatibility with operational scenarios and diagnostics
- Develop reduced-complexity algorithms for predict-first integration
Physics Modeling
- Benchmark 3D MHD codes for disruption load prediction
- Project disruption characteristics from SPARC to ARC
- Model runaway electron physics and REMC requirements
Mitigation Systems
- Optimize massive gas injection valve design and TQ radiation flash
- Contribute to the development of DMS and REMC research plans
- Create tools for disruption loading assessments using radiation flash analysis
ARC Projections
- Scale disruption loads and quench projections to ARC using empirical scalings and simulations
- Apply transfer learning for algorithm adaptation from SPARC to ARC
- Estimate ARC disruption frequency and runaway electron parameter space
External collaborators
- V. Izzo (FiatLux)
- S. Ratinskaya (KTH)
- N. Ferraro (PPPL)
- A. Kleiner (PPPL)
- C. Paz-Soldan (CU)
- C. Hansen (CU)
- O. Nelson (CU)