The Impact of Collisionality on the Runaway Electron Avalanche during a Tokamak Disruption

Abstract

The exponential growth (avalanching) of runaway electrons (REs) during a tokamak disruption continues to be a large uncertainty in RE modeling. The present work investigates the impact of tokamak geometry on the efficiency of the avalanche mechanism across a broad range of disruption scenarios. It is found that the parameter ${\nu }_{\ast ,crit}$ describing the collisionality at the critical energy to run away delineates how toroidal geometry impacts RE formation. In particular, utilizing a reduced but self-consistent description of plasma power balance, it is shown that for a high-density deuterium-dominated plasma, ${\nu }_{\ast ,crit}$ is robustly less than one, resulting in a substantial decrease in the efficiency of the RE avalanche compared to predictions from slab geometry. In contrast, for plasmas containing a substantial quantity of neon or argon, ${\nu }_{\ast ,crit}\gtrsim 1$, no reduction of the avalanche is observed due to toroidal geometry. This sharp contrast in the impact of low-versus high-Z material results primarily from the relatively strong radiative cooling from high-Z impurities, enabling the plasma to be radiatively pinned at low temperatures and thus large electric fields, even for modest quantities of high-Z material.