Our Fusion Group members Mervi Mantsinen and Dani Gallart are currently on a EUROfusion mission to the Culham Center for Fusion Energy, UK, to take part in the C36b experimental campaign of the JET tokamak. The campaign started on the 10th of October 2016 and is now in full swing.
Mervi is one of the four scientific coordinators of experiment M15-02 which develops the so-called hybrid plasma scenario for the forthcoming JET campaign with a reactor-relevant deuterium-tritium fuel mixture. The hybrid scenario is an operational tokamak plasma regime which is designed to achieve long pulse operation. It has been suggested for ITER to allow operation at a high fusion power over 1000 s at a lower plasma current than for the ITER reference scenario.
Over the four weeks of the present JET campaign, the M15-02 experiment is allocated a total of nine sessions which corresponds to 4.5 operational days. Operations run from 6 am to 10 pm, Monday to Friday, in two shifts and sessions each day.