Impurity seeding for suppression of the near Scrape-Off Layer heat flux feature in tokamak limited plasmas

In inboard-limited plasmas, foreseen to be used in future fusion reactors start-up and ramp down phases, the Scrape-Off Layer (SOL) exhibits two regions: the near and far SOL. The steep radial gradient of the parallel heat flux associated with the near SOL can result in excessive thermal loads onto the solid surfaces, damaging them and/or limiting the operational space of a fusion reactor. In this article, leveraging the results presented in [F. Nespoli et al., Nuclear Fusion 2017], we propose a technique for the mitigation and suppression of the near SOL heat flux feature by impurity seeding. First successful experimental results from the TCV tokamak are presented and discussed.