Trey Gehbart, Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL)

"The ITER Disruption Mitigation System: Engineering Design and Physics Basis.”

Abstract: Disruptions pose a serious threat to tokamaks due to the potential for concentrated heat loads, enormous electromagnetic loads, and the risk of generating runaway electrons. Mitigation of detectable disruptions is paramount for operation of ITER, and future tokamak-based power plant systems. The mitigation technique of choice for ITER is shattered pellet injection (SPI) due to its ability to rapidly inject a delta function of material into the plasma. ITER recently held the final design review for their SPI-based disruption mitigation system (DMS). This talk will provide an overview of disruptions and the SPI technique, ITERs DMS engineering design, the potential injection schemes for ITER and supporting research conducted on JET, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s R&D contributions to the ITER DMS. 

Bio: Dr. Gebhart is R&D Staff in the Fusion Energy Division at ORNL. He joined ORNL in 2017 as a post- doctoral research staff member. In his current role as a pellet injection and fuel cycle scientist for fusion applications, he spends the majority of his time conducting R&D for the ITER disruption mitigation system and the development of a cryogenic direct internal recirculation solution for the fusion fuel cycle. Dr. Gebhart is situated within the Blanket and Fuel Cycle Group in the Fusion Energy Division, which is a part of the Fusion and Fission Energy and Science Directorate at ORNL. Dr. Gebhart is heavily involved in the American Nuclear Society (ANS), serving as the Secretary/Treasurer of the Fusion Energy Division of the ANS, where he has been involved in planning the technical program of the Technology of Fusion Energy Meetings since 2016. He also serves as a member of the Fusion Technology Standing Committee of the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society.

Dr. Gebhart completed his PhD in Nuclear Engineering at the University of Florida (UF) in 2016. His dissertation focus was on the design and characterization of a pulsed plasma source to mimic the heat loads generated by edge localized modes in a fusion device. Prior to his time at UF, he completed his master’s and bachelor’s degrees in mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech (2013, 2011).

This talk will be offered in a hybrid format. If you wish to participate remotely, please send an email to [email protected].