Long citation – Daniel Fajardo

Theory-based integrated modelling of impurity transport in tokamaks

Daniel Fajardo’s work has led to important insights in the area of impurity transport and its effect on plasma behavior in magnetically confined fusion plasmas. The results are original and of great importance for the international fusion community. Dr Fajardo has developed a novel integrated theory-based modelling framework for impurity transport in tokamak plasmas and has validated it against existing experiments. The model developed by Dr. Fajardo, fast and accurate, has become the reference model to simulate neoclassical transport in tokamaks. Of particular relevance in this context the identification of the role of plasma rotation in impurity central accumulation of heavy impurities at various plasma collisionalities. Addressing the question of the impurity behavior in ITER, Dr. Fajardo has identified the key physics that govern tungsten transport in ITER plasmas, namely the large ratio of anomalous to neoclassical transport in ITER compared to present experiments, such that scenarios where uncontrolled core tungsten peaking can develop in ITER, requiring corrective procedures, are now predicted to be the low power L-mode phases rather than the high-power H-mode ones. With Dr Fajardo’s work, physics understanding of core tungsten transport in present experiments and future fusion reactors is sufficiently mature as to allow quantitative predictions.