Summary of the IAEA technical meeting on plasma disruptions and their mitigation

This report summarizes the contributions presented at the IAEA technical meeting on plasma disruptions and their mitigation, held virtually, 20–23 July 2020. The meeting brought together more than 120 experts from nuclear fusion research sites worldwide to discuss experimental, theoretical and modelling work in the field of plasma disruptions with special emphasis on developing a solid basis for possible disruption mitigation strategies in ITER and next generation fusion devices. The main topics of the meeting were: (i) disruption consequences, including electromagnetic loads, heat loads, and runaway electrons; (ii) disruption prediction and avoidance, including machine learning and physics-based approaches, and control aspects; and (iii) disruption mitigation, including shattered pellet injection, alternative techniques and general aspects of disruption mitigation.