The EUROfusion experimental campaign at the Joint European Torus (JET) located at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE), UK is in full swing.
Last week our group leader Mervi Mantsinen and our La Caixa-funded PhD student Dani Gallart visited JET to participate in this campaign. Our focus was in on-site preparation, execution and first analysis of two sessions of the experiment M18-05 “ICRH scenario support in D and T plasmas” for which Mervi is one of the two scientific coordinators. 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, experiment M18-05 is allocated a total of six experimental sessions. The two sessions on Thursday were dedicated to the characterization of 3He minority heating using waves in the ion cyclotron range of frequencies in high-performance plasmas. Overall, the sessions went very well, achieving a total of 18 successful plasma discharges with up to 5 MW of ICRF power and 24 MW of NBI. Over the coming weeks the whole experimental team will be very busy analyzing these discharges and preparing for the forthcoming experiments later this year.