Two types of experiments were carried out to conduct an intrinsic rotation study in KSTAR. The first was a density ramp-up experiment without neutral beam injection, and the second was an experiment with beam blip technique. In these experiments, some characteristics of the intrinsic rotation were observed in the KSTAR Ohmic L-mode plasmas including: (i) a non-monotonic dependence of the core intrinsic rotation, called U-curve behaviour, with respect to the electron density and the collisionality related to the gradient of the toroidal rotation profile; and (ii) the behaviour of the anchor point in the intrinsic rotation profile for which the region exhibits a roughly flat shape and stays at nearly the same value even if the gradient of the toroidal rotation changes significantly in the core region. The location of the anchor point seems to be related to the q profile, and the toroidal rotation at the anchor point changes with the plasma operation parameters. These observations in the KSTAR Ohmic L-mode plasmas seem to be related to the rotation reversal phenomenon. A transport analysis was performed for the beam blip experiments in order to evaluate the intrinsic torque so that the U-curve behaviour can be further understood. The first results of the transport analysis in the KSTAR Ohmic L-mode plasmas show a correlation of the momentum fluxes and the intrinsic torques with the electron density and the collisionality. The rough magnitude and profiles of the intrinsic torque was experimentally obtained, and their possible mechanism is briefly discussed.

Since the first H-mode discharges in 2010, the duration of the H-mode state has been extended and a significantly wider operational window of plasma parameters has been attained. Using a second neutral beam (NB) source and improved tuning of equilibrium configuration with real-time plasma control, a stored energy of W tot ∼ 450 kJ has been achieved with a corresponding energy confinement time of τ E ∼ 163 ms. Recent discharges, produced in the fall of 2012, have reached plasma β N up to 2.9 and surpassed the n = 1 ideal no-wall stability limit computed for H-mode pressure profiles, which is one of the key threshold parameters defining advanced tokamak operation. Typical H-mode discharges were operated with a plasma current of 600 kA at a toroidal magnetic field B T = 2 T. L-H transitions were obtained with 0.8-3.0 MW of NB injection power in both single-and double-null configurations, with H-mode durations up to ∼15 s at 600 kA of plasma current. The measured power threshold as a function of lineaveraged density showed a roll-over with a minimum value of ∼0.8 MW at ne ∼ 2×10 19 m −3 . Several edge-localized mode (ELM) control techniques during H-mode were examined with successful results including resonant magnetic perturbation, supersonic molecular beam injection (SMBI), vertical jogging and electron cyclotron current drive injection into the pedestal region. We observed various ELM responses, i.e. suppression or mitigation, depending on the relative phase of in-vessel control coil currents. In particular, with the 90 • phase of the n = 1 RMP as the most resonant configuration, a complete suppression of type-I ELMs was demonstrated. In addition, fast vertical jogging of the plasma column was also observed to be effective in ELM pace-making. SMBI-mitigated ELMs, a state of mitigated ELMs, were sustained for a few tens of ELM periods. A simple cellular automata ('sand-pile') model predicted that shallow deposition near the pedestal foot induced small-sized high-frequency ELMs, leading to the mitigation of large ELMs. In addition to the ELM control experiments, various physics topics were explored focusing on ITER-relevant physics issues such as the alteration of toroidal rotation caused by both electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH) and externally applied 3D fields, and the observed rotation drop by ECRH in NB-heated plasmas was investigated in terms of either a reversal of the turbulence-driven residual stress due to the transition of ion temperature gradient to trapped electron mode turbulence or neoclassical toroidal viscosity (NTV) torque by the internal kink mode. The suppression of runaway electrons using massive gas injection of deuterium showed that runaway electrons were avoided only below 3 T in KSTAR. Operation in 2013 is expected to routinely exceed the n = 1 ideal MHD no-wall stability boundary in the long-pulse H-mode ( 10 s) by applying real-time shaping control, enabling n = 1 resistive wall mode active control studies. In addition, intensive works for ELM mitigation, ELM dynamics, toroidal ro...

We report results of benchmarking of core particle transport simulations by a collection of codes widely used in transport modelling of tokamak plasmas. Our analysis includes formulation of transport equations, difference between electron and ion solvers, comparison of modules of the 2 pellet and edge gas fuelling on the ITER baseline scenario. During the first phase of benchmarking we address the particle transport effects in the stationary phase. Firstly, simulations are performed with identical sources, sinks, transport coefficients, and boundary conditions prescribed in the flattop H-mode phase. The transformation of ion particle transport equations is introduced so to directly compare their results to electron transport solvers. Secondly, the pellet fuelling models are benchmarked in various conditions to evaluate the dependency of the pellet deposition on the pellet volume, injection side, pedestal and separatrix parameters. Thirdly, edge gas fuelling is benchmarked to assess sensitivities of source profile predictions to uncertainties in plasma conditions and detailed model assumptions. At the second phase, we address particle transport effects in the time-evolving plasma including the current ramp-up to the ramp-down phase. The ion and the electron solvers are benchmarked together. Differences between the simulation results of the solvers are investigated in terms of equilibrium, grid resolution, radial coordinate, radial grid distribution, and plasma volume evolution term. We found that the selection of the radial coordinate can yield prominent differences between the solvers mainly due to differences in the edge grid distribution. The simulations reveal that electron and ion solvers predict noticeably different density peaking for the same diffusion and pinch velocity while with the peaked profile of helium, expected in fusion reactors. The fuelling benchmarking shows that gas puffing is not efficient for core fuelling in H-modes and density control should be done by the high field side pellet injection in contrast to present machines. mode in the current flattop phase depends sensitively on the particle balance of the mixed D-T fuels, He and impurities. In ITER, the neutral beam injection (NBI) does not play a noticeable role neither in the global particle balance [7], nor for the central fuelling. Moreover, the SOLPS modelling [7] predicts dramatic reduction of the gas penetrated from the edge, making the pellet injection the main tool for the density control in the H-mode plasmas, though the gas penetrated from the edge still can play the dominant role for the L-mode operation. Features like the recycling and penetration of He and the fuel into the core plasma are central to understanding the dilution and tritium burnup. The SOL/divertor plasma and its interactions with plasma facing components will set the boundary conditions for the core transport. Eventually, the particle transport alters the heat and the momentum transport so all these non-linear connections need to be understood simultaneously t...

Perturbative experiments have been carried out using tangential neutral beam injection (NBI) and non-resonant magnetic perturbation (NRMP) to analyze the momentum transport properties in KSTAR H-modes. Diffusive and non-diffusive terms of momentum transport are evaluated from the transient analysis. Although the operating conditions and methodologies applied in the two cases are similar, the momentum transport properties obtained show clear differences. The estimated momentum diffusivity and pinch obtained in the NBI modulation experiments is larger than that in the NRMP modulation experiments. We found that this discrepancy could be a result of uncertainties in the assumption for the analysis. By introducing time varying momentum transport coefficients depending on the temperature gradient, the linearized equation shows that if the temperature perturbation exists, the evolution of toroidal rotation perturbation could be faster than the transport rate of mean quantity, since the evolution of toroidal rotation perturbation is related to , a momentum diffusivity from perturbative analysis. This could explain the estimated higher momentum diffusivity using time independent transport coefficients in NBI experiments with higher ion temperature perturbation compared to that in NRMP modulation experiments. The differences in the momentum transport coefficient with NRMP and NBI are much reduced by considering time varying momentum transport coefficients in the time dependent transport simulation.

Magnetic well structures are introduced as an effective means to reduce the prompt loss of fast ions, the so-called first orbit loss from neutral beam injection (NBI), which is beneficial to tokamaks with a low magnetic field strength such as small spherical torus devices. It is found by single-particle analysis that this additional field structure can modify the gradient of the magnetic field to reduce the shift of the guiding center trajectory of the fast ion. This result is verified by a numerical calculation of following the fast ion's trajectory. We apply this concept to the Versatile Experiment Spherical Torus [1], where NBI is under design for the purpose of achieving high-performance plasma, to evaluate the effect of the magnetic well structure on NBI efficiency. A 1D NBI analysis code and the NUBEAM code are employed for detailed NBI calculations. The simulation results show that the orbit loss can be reduced by 70%-80%, thereby improving the beam efficiency twofold compared with the reference case without the well structure. The well-shaped magnetic field structure in the low-field side can significantly decrease orbit loss by broadening the non-orbit loss region and widening the range of the velocity direction, thus improving the heating efficiency. It is found that this magnetic well can also improve orbit loss during the slowing down process.