Abstract:During the initial operation of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), it is envisaged that activation will be minimised by using hydrogen (H) plasmas where the reference ion cyclotron resonance frequency (ICRF) heating scenarios rely on minority species such as helium ( 3 He) or deuterium (D). This paper firstly describes experiments dedicated to the study of 3 He heating in H plasmas with a sequence of discharges in which 5 MW of ICRF power was reliably coupled and the 3 He concentration, controlled in real-time, was varied from below 1 % up to 10 %. The minority heating regime was observed at low concentrations (up to 2 %). Energetic tails in the 3 He ion distributions were observed with effective temperatures up to 300 keV and bulk electron temperatures up to 6 keV. At around 2 %, a sudden transition was reproducibly observed to the mode conversion regime, in which the ICRF fast wave couples to short wavelength modes, leading to efficient direct electron heating and bulk electron temperatures up to 8 keV. Secondly, experiments performed to study D minority ion heating in H plasmas are presented. This minority heating scheme proved much more difficult since modest quantities of carbon (C) impurity ions, which have the same charge to mass ratio as the D ions, led directly to the mode conversion regime.Finally, numerical simulations to interpret these two sets of experiments are under way and preliminary results are shown.

Work is in progress to completely replace, in 2008/9, the existing JET CFC tiles with a configuration of plasma facing materials consistent with the ITER design. The ITER-like Wall (ILW) will be created with a combination of beryllium (Be), tungsten (W), W-Coated CFC and Be-Coated inconel tiles, with the material depending on the local anticipated heat flux and geometry. It is part of an integrated package of JET enhancements whose aim is to develop an understanding of the ITER materials issues and develop the techniques required to operate with inductive and advanced scenarios as close as possible to ITER parameters. Over 4000 tiles will be replaced and the ILW will accommodate additional heating up to at least 50 MW for 10 s. This paper describes the scientific background to the project, the technical objectives, the material configuration selected, the R&D behind the practical realisation of the objectives and the generic problems associated with the Be tiles (power handling capacity and disruption induced eddy currents). One of the objectives is to maintain or improve the existing CFC tile power handling performance which has been achieved in most cases by hiding bolt holes, optimising tile size and profile and introducing castellations on plasma facing surfaces.

The ITER reference materials have been tested separately in tokamaks, plasma simulators,

In the frame of JET's ITER-like Wall Project for most of the divertor surface tungsten coatings are intended to be employed on bidirectionally carbon fibre reinforced carbon substrates. Since this is thermomechanically rather mis-matched, a variety of deposition conditions were considered. Mostly in cooperation with industry, five Euratom associations provided 14 different types of samples with respect to production method and coating thickness. In a step-wise selection procedure, these were subjected to a thermal screening test and a thermal cycling test in the ion beam facility GLADIS as well as to an ELM-like thermal shock test in the electron beam facility JUDITH. A general failure mode is crack formation upon cool-down. Coatings with several microns of thickness show a distinct delamination feature in addition. Further analysis included metallographic investigation, x-ray diffraction for film stress assessment, adhesion testing as well as measurements on the contents of light impurities.

This paper reports on ITER-relevant ICRF physics investigated on JET in 2003 and early 2004.Minority heating of helium three in hydrogen plasmas -( 3 He)H -was systematically explored by varying the 3 He concentration and the toroidal phasing of the antenna arrays. The best heating performance (a maximum electron temperature of 6.2keV with 5MW of ICRF power) was obtained with a preferential wave launch in the direction of the plasma current. A clear experimental demonstration was made of the sharp and reproducible transition to the mode conversion heating regime when the 3 He concentration increases above ~2%. In the latter regime the best heating performance (a maximum electron temperature of 8keV with 5MW of ICRF power) was achieved with dipole array phasing, i.e. a symmetric antenna power spectrum. Minority heating of deuterium in hydrogen plasmas -(D)H -was also investigated but was found inaccessible, because this scenario is too sensitive to impurity ions with Z/A=1/2 such as C 6+ , small amounts of which directly lead into the mode conversion regime. Minority heating of up to 3% of tritium in deuterium plasmas was systematically investigated during the JET Trace Tritium experimental campaign (TTE). This required operating JET at its highest possible magnetic field (3.9 to 4T) and the ICRF system at its lowest frequency (23MHz). The interest of this scenario for ICRF heating at these low concentrations and its efficiency at boosting the suprathermal neutron yield were confirmed, and the measured neutron and gammay ray spectra permit interesting comparisons with advanced ICRF code simulations.Investigations of finite Larmor radius effects on the RF-induced high-energy tails during second harmonic (ω=2 ω c ) heating of a hydrogen minority in D plasmas clearly demonstrated a strong decrease of the RF diffusion coefficient at proton energies ~1MeV, in agreement with theoretical 4 expectations. Fast wave heating and current drive experiments in deuterium plasmas showed effective direct electron heating with dipole phasing of the antennas, but only small changes of the central plasma current density were observed with the directive phasings, in particular at low single pass damping. New investigations of the heating efficiency of ICRF antennas confirmed its strong dependence on the parallel wavenumber spectrum. Advances i n topics of a more technological nature are also summarized: ELM studies using fast RF measurements, the successful experimental demonstration of a new ELM-tolerant antenna matching scheme, and technical enhancements planned on the JET ICRF system for 2006, themselves equally strongly driven by the preparation for ITER.5