Since the installation of an ITER-like wall, the JET programme has focused on the consolidation of ITER design choices and the preparation for ITER operation, with a specific emphasis given to the bulk tungsten melt experiment, which has been crucial for the final decision on the material choice for the day-one tungsten divertor in ITER. Integrated scenarios have been progressed with the re-establishment of long-pulse, high-confinement H-modes by optimizing the magnetic configuration and the use of ICRH to avoid tungsten impurity accumulation. Stationary discharges with detached divertor conditions and small edge localized modes have been demonstrated by nitrogen seeding. The differences in confinement and pedestal behaviour before and after the ITER-like wall installation have been better characterized towards the development of high fusion yield scenarios in DT. Post-mortem analyses of the plasma-facing components have confirmed the previously reported low fuel retention obtained by gas balance and shown that the pattern of deposition within the divertor has changed significantly with respect to the JET carbon wall campaigns due to the absence of thermally activated chemical erosion of beryllium in contrast to carbon. Transport to remote areas is almost absent and two orders of magnitude less material is found in the divertor.

Tungsten transport is investigated in WEST long pulse L-mode plasmas operated with the strike point on the actively cooled upper tungsten divertor. The pulses are mostly heated by lower hybrid waves. It is experimentally found that tungsten does not centrally accumulate throughout these ∼ 30 s reproducible discharges despite large normalised electron density gradients R/Ln e. To explain these observations, turbulent and neoclassical transport of electrons and tungsten ions are computed with GKW [1] and NEO [2, 3] respectively. Additionally, interpretative integrated modelling simulations are also performed to keep data coherency despite the lack of measurements of some quantities such as the Ti profiles. Modelled R/Ln e are found consistent with interferometry inversions and the tungsten peaking factor R/Ln W remains comparable to R/Ln e due to dominant turbulent diffusivities inside r/a = 0.3−0.8. In the central region r/a < 0.3 neoclassical W transport dominates but the convective velocities are several order of magnitudes lower compared to plasmas with toroidal rotation velocities induced by a neutral beam injection (NBI) torque. Finally, nitrogen is seeded in these pulses leading to an enhanced energy content which is consistent with stabilised ion temperature gradient modes from dilution.

Absolute flux of fast ion losses induced by tearing modes have been measured by means of fast ion loss detectors (FILD) for the first time in RF heated plasmas in the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak. Up to 30 M W/m 2 of fast ion losses are measured by FILD at 5 cm from the separatrix, consistent with infra-red camera measurements, with energies in the range of 250 − 500 keV and pitch angles corresponding to large trapped orbits. A resonant interaction between the fast ions in the high energy tail of the ICRF distribution and a m/n = 5/4 tearing mode leads to enhanced fast ion losses. Around 9.3 ± 0.7 % of the fast ion losses are found to be coherent with the mode and scale linearly with its amplitude, indicating the convective nature of the transport mechanism. Simulations have been carried out to estimate the contribution of the prompt losses. A good agreement is found between the simulated and the measured velocity space of the losses. The velocity space resonances that may be responsible for the enhanced fast ion losses are identified. ‡ See the author list of H. Meyer et al., Nucl. Fusion 57 102014 (2017).

This paper is focused on the soft x-ray (SXR) tomography system setup at Tore Supra (DTOMOX) and the recent developments made to automatically get precise information about plasma features from inverted data. The first part describes the main aspects of the tomographic inversion optimization process. Several observations are made using this new tool and a set of shape factors is defined to help characterizing the emissivity field in a real-time perspective. The second part presents a detailed off-line analysis comparing the positions of the magnetic axis obtained from a magnetic equilibrium solver, and the maximum of the reconstructed emissivity field for ohmic and heated pulses. A systematic discrepancy of about 5 cm is found in both cases and it is shown that this discrepancy increases during sawtooth crashes. Finally, evidence of radially localized tungsten accumulation with an in-out asymmetry during a lower hybrid current drive pulse is provided to illustrate the DTOMOX capabilities for a precise observation of local phenomena.