The JET 2019-2020 scientific and technological programme exploited the results of years of concerted scientific and engineering work, including the ITER-like wall (ILW: Be wall and W divertor) installed in 2010, improved diagnostic capabilities now fully available, a major Neutral Beam Injection (NBI) upgrade providing record power in 2019-2020, and tested the technical & procedural preparation for safe operation with tritium. Research along three complementary axes yielded a wealth of new results. Firstly, the JET plasma programme delivered scenarios suitable for high fusion power and alpha particle physics in the coming D-T campaign (DTE2), with record sustained neutron rates, as well as plasmas for clarifying the impact of isotope mass on plasma core, edge and plasma-wall interactions, and for ITER pre-fusion power operation. The efficacy of the newly installed Shattered Pellet Injector for mitigating disruption forces and runaway electrons was demonstrated. Secondly, research on the consequences of long-term exposure to JET-ILW plasma was completed, with emphasis on wall damage and fuel retention, and with analyses of wall materials and dust particles that will help validate assumptions and codes for design & operation of ITER and DEMO. Thirdly, the nuclear technology programme aiming to deliver maximum technological return from operations in D, T and D-T benefited from the highest D-D neutron yield in years, securing results for validating radiation transport and activation codes, and nuclear data for ITER.

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Since ITER will be a full metallic wall machine, scattered photons from the strong emission in the divertor may distort the emission from the scrape-off layer (SOL). The influence of stray light for visible spectroscopy of H α and Be I emissions in ITER was investigated with a ray-tracing simulation. It was found that the stray light would be always more than one order of magnitude greater than the real signal intensity for H α emission from the SOL. For Be I emission, although the situation was better than the cases of H α measurement, the stray light could be much larger than the real signal from the SOL. In ITER, it will inevitably reduce the stray light somehow for visible spectroscopy. The effect of optical dumps embedded on first walls was investigated with the ray-tracing analysis.

This paper presents a review of the last T-11M and T-10 tokamak activity in the field of Li plasma facing component (PFC) investigation. Attention is mainly paid to the realization of the concept of closed loop lithium circulation as a solution of the PFC problem of a steady-state DT volumetric neutron source on a tokamak basis. Realization of the Li PFC concept demands the decision of three main tasks: lithium injection into the plasma, Li collection before its deposition on the vacuum vessel and the return of Li to the injection zone from the collector. This emitter–collector concept assumes that the main heat flux from a hot plasma to the PFC (limiters and divertor plates) can be dissipated on the entire vessel wall surface by non-coronal Li radiation, which will smoothen the local heat load PFC. A rail limiter on the basis of a capillary porous system manufactured from tungsten felt and provided with W wings was successfully tested in the last T-11M experiments as a prototype of steady-state Li emitter–collector. A witness-sample analysis showed that the lateral sides of the rail and ring limiters crossing the plasma scrape-off layer can collect a significant (∼80%) part of Li, injected into the plasma during discharges. This can be used in the future for closing Li loop circulation. As was shown by Li pellet injection in T-10, the probability of Li penetration into the hot plasma core from its boundary is lower than that of deuterium by a factor of 5–10. This result can explain the effect of plasma cleaning (Z eff (0) ∼ 1) during T-10 Li experiments. Some different schemes of future lithium circulation loops are discussed.

A tomographic method for reconstructing the axially symmetric Dα emission profile in the ITER scrape-off layer and divertor from Dα intensity measurements in the fields of view (FoV) of Vis/IR TV and Divertor Impurity Monitor diagnostics is under development. The method takes into account the strong background signal due to stray light from divertor produced by reflections from the metal wall of the vacuum chamber. The method allows to filter out the reflections in Dα signals measured in the main chamber. The accuracy of this method is tested within the framework of a synthetic diagnostic, which uses the Raysect and Cherab numerical codes for ray-tracing simulations. The Dα emission profiles, simulated with the SOLPS and OEDGE codes, are used as synthetic experimental data. Uncertainty in light reflection properties of the first wall (FW) is the major factor affecting the accuracy of the Dα emission reconstruction. The dependence on the uncertainty in the FW surface roughness and on the ratio of diffusive to specular reflection of the error in recovering useful Dα signals (the direct light without reflections) in the FoV of the ITER main chamber H-alpha and Visible Spectroscopy Diagnostic is obtained.