The new EUROfusion experimental campaign at the Joint European Torus (JET) located at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE), UK started earlier this week.
Our group leader Mervi Mantsinen participates in this new experimental campaign as one of the two scientific coordinators of experiment M18-05 “ICRH scenario support in D and T plasmas” at JET. This means that she is in charge of the scientific planning of this experiment and the coordination of its international team of approximately 45 scientists from various institutions all over Europe.
In the present JET campaign, the experiment M18-05 is allocated a total of six experimental sessions. The first of them was carried out this Wednesday. It was dedicated to demonstrating sawtooth pacing with ICRF power under real time control in good confinement H-mode plasmas. The aim is to provide a tool for reducing central plasma impurity content and improving plasma stability. Overall, the session went very well, achieving a total of 12 plasma discharges with up to 6 MW of ICRF power and 20 MW of NBI.
After the present JET campaign in deuterium (D) fuel, a tritium (T) campaign is planned. These campaigns are made in preparation for the eventual D-T campaign with a fusion reactor relevant 50%-50% D-T fuel mixture. It will be the second D-T campaign at JET; the first D-T campaign at JET was carried out in 1997. The production and physics of born alphas (He-4) at 3.5MeV due to D-T fusion reactions will be tested and assessed with the ITER-like-wall made of beryllium (Be) and tungsten (W). As high-performance discharges are sought, the control of high-Z impurity transport will play a key role during this campaign.
During her stay at JET this week, Mervi had also an opportunity to give a talk entitled “Modelling of three-ion ICRF schemes with PION” in one of the JET task force meeting. The talk is planned as an oral contribution at the forthcoming 46th European Physical Society Conference on Plasma Physics (EPS2019) that will be held in Milan (Italy) from July 8 to 12, 2019, and reviews the highlight results from her modelling of experiments with three-ion ICRF schemes on ASDEX Upgrade and JET and their comparisons with experimental results.