Ten years of W programme in ASDEX Upgrade - Challenges and conclusions

Since 1999 ASDEX Upgrade increased its tungsten plasma-facing components (PFCs) and finally reached a full W coverage in 2007. Most of the initial goals of the investigations were successfully achieved. A highlight of the investigations was multiple start-ups and operation without any boronization demonstrating that performance and confinement similar to boronized operation with carbon PFCs can be reached in high power, high density discharges. This also allowed the investigation of the hydrogen retention without disturbing effects from the low-Z coating. A strong reduction of hydrogen retention was found in gas balance measurements as well as in post-mortem analyses. On the other hand, an almost complete suppression of low-Z divertor radiation was achieved after boronization, providing valuable information on the control requirements of radiative cooling by artificially introduced impurities. Among the challenges remains the strong increase of the W source and W concentration resulting from ICRH. At the same time it helped to identify the underlying physics and may lead to solutions superior to the presently used ones.