The Plasma Facing Components (PFC) will play a crucial role in future deuterium-tritium magnetically
confined fusion power plants, since they will be subject to high energy and particle loads,
but at the same time have to ensure long lifetimes and a low tritium retention. These requirements
will most probably necessitate the use of high-Z materials such as tungsten for the wall materials,
since their erosion properties are very benign and, unlike carbon, capture only little tritium. The
drawback with high-Z materials is, that they emit strong line radiation in the core plasma, which
acts as a powerful energy loss mechanism. Thus, the concentration of these high-Z materials has to
be controlled and kept at low levels in order to achieve a burning plasma. Understanding the transport
processes in the plasma edge is essential for applying the proper impurity control mechanisms.
This control can be exerted either by enhancing the outflux, e.g. by Edge Localized Modes (ELM),
since they are known to expell impurities from the main plasma, or by reducing the influx, e.g.
minimizing the tungsten erosion or increasing the shielding effect of the Scrape Off Layer (SOL).
ASDEX Upgrade (AUG) has been successfully operating with a full tungsten wall for several years
now and offers the possibility to investigate these edge transport processes for tungsten. This study
focused on the disentanglement of the frequency of type-I ELMs and the main chamber gas injection
rate, two parameters which are usually linked in H-mode discharges. Such a separation allowed for
the first time the direct assessment of the impact of each parameter on the tungsten concentration.
The control of the ELM frequency was performed by adjusting the shape of the plasma, i.e. the
upper triangularity.
The radial tungsten transport was investigated by implementing a modulated tungsten source. To
create this modulated source, the linear dependence of the tungsten erosion rate at the Ion Cyclotron
Resonance Heating (ICRH) limiters on the injected ICRH power was used. The phase and amplitude
of the inwardly propagating tungsten signal was then observed at the erosion site and at three
radial positions in the main plasma, from which two were identified in the course of this work by a
thorough investigation of the tungsten radiation features in the Vacuum Ultra-Violet (VUV) spectral
range . The newly found observation sites are located right in the steep gradient region, close to
the Edge Transport Barrier (ETB) and slightly further inside at the pedestal top of AUG H-mode
discharges. Futhermore, the parallel flows in the SOL have been monitored by spectroscopical means
and Langmuir probes.
The experimental results were quite unexpected, since the ELM frequency had no influence on the
tungsten concentration, and the sole actuator on this quantity was the gas injection rate. The evaluation
of the modulated tungsten signal revealed that neither gas puffing nor plasma shape had an
measureable influence on the radial tungsten transport processes. In addition, the tungsten erosion
sources were only partially responsible for the observed tungsten behavior. These observations inspired
a simple model, which balanced the tungsten outflux with the tungsten influx. In this model
the impurity exauhst by ELMs is not diffusive, but turbulent and linked to the ELM size. The model
predicted a linear dependence between the tungsten concentration and the parallel velocity in the
SOL. This linear dependence was confirmed by the spectroscopical evaluation of the SOL parallel
flows.