Performance of a pneumatic hydrogen-pellet injection system on the Joint European Torus

A pneumatic-based, hydrogen isotope pellet injector that was developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has been used in recent plasma fueling experiments on the Joint European Torus (JET). The injector consists of three independent machine-gun-like mechanisms (nominal pellet sizes of 2.7, 4.0, and 6.0 mm in diameter) and features repetitive operation (1-5 Hz) for quasi-steady-state conditions (>10 s). An extensive set of injector diagnostics permits evaluation of parameters for each pellet shot, including speed, mass, and integrity. Pellet speeds range from 1.0 to 1.5 km/s. Over 3700 pellets have been fired with the equipment at JET, with about 1500 pellets shot for plasma fueling experiments. In recent experiments, the system performance has been outstanding, including excellent reproducibility in pellet speed and mass, and a reliability of >98% in delivery of pellets to the plasma.