Improved energy confinement for additionally heated JT-60 limiter and lower x-point discharges has been obtained with hydrogen pellet injection. The energy confinement time is enhanced by up to 40% over that of usual gas fuelled discharges at a medium NB or NB + ICRF heating power level of < 15 MW, for which a strongly peaked electron density profile with ne(0)/⟨ne⟩ < 5 and ne(0) < 2.0 × 1020 m−3 is sustained within 0.5 s after a series of pellet injections. The achieved values of the fusion product ne(0)τE(a)Te(0) (<6.8 × 1019 m−3·s·keV) at Ip = 2.5 MA exceed those obtained previously on JT-60 at Ip = 3.1 MA. The improved discharges are characterized by a pressure profile that peaks strongly around the magnetic axis (inside the sawtooth inversion radius) and degrades when a large sawtooth recovers or when the pressure gradient reaches a critical value. The peakedness depends strongly on the penetration length of the pellets. In lower x-point discharges, the improvement is distinct in the low q (q < 3) regime, probably because of suppression of the sawtooth activity.

No abstract

A decaborane-based boronization system has been installed in the JT-60U tokamak in order to reduce the influx of impurities during plasma discharges. Boronization has been performed under a glow discharge using a helium-decaborane gas mixture. The properties of the boron films deposited through boronization and the effects of boronization on the tokamak discharges were investigated. It was found that the deposition of a boron layer with high purity was achieved with few impurities other than hydrogen through boronization, and that the present boronization deposited toroidally nonuniform boron film. It was also found that the decaborane-based boronization resulted in good plasma performance similar to that of conventional boronization.

Fusion performance of reversed shear discharges with an L-mode edge has been significantly improved in a thermonuclear dominant regime with up to 2.8 MA of plasma current in the JT-60U tokamak. The core plasma energy is efficiently confined due to the existence of persistent internal transport barriers formed for both ions and electrons at a large minor radius of r͞a ϳ 0.7 near the boundary of the reversed shear region. In an assumed deuterium-tritium fuel, the peak fusion amplification factor defined for transient conditions involving the dW ͞dt term would be in excess of unity. [S0031-9007(97)04592-4] PACS numbers: 52.55.Fa, 52.55.PiThe reversed shear discharges are considered attractive for a steady state operation with a large bootstrap current fraction in tokamak reactors as proposed for SSTR [1] and ITER [2], since it would be possible to match the hollow current profile to a bootstrap current profile in a steady state. While the central magnetic shear in tokamak plasmas is naturally reversed during a sufficiently long discharge duration with a large bootstrap current fraction [3], the forced shear reversal operation by enhancing a skin current effect has become important for establishing a controlled approach to the steady state [4].In nuclear fusion research, critical conditions in which fusion power produced in plasmas is equal to loss power from the plasmas have been pursued as a crucial milestone ultimately towards the commercial use of thermonuclear fusion energy. In order to determine whether the reversed shear scenario is workable, it is crucially important to demonstrate the fusion-relevant performance, particularly in the thermonuclear fusion regime with the shear reversal operation. So far, however, most of the previous experiments addressing high fusion reactivity in tokamaks have been limited to a hot-ion regime with substantial beam-thermal reactions for deuterium plasmas in TFTR supershot [5], JET hot-ion H mode [6] and JT-60U high-b p H mode [7], and deuterium-tritium (D-T) plasmas in TFTR supershot [8]. Although fusion performance has been recently enhanced with strong profile and shaping control in deuterium reversed shear plasmas with an H-mode edge in DIII-D [9], the projected D-T fusion power is substantially below the loss power from the plasma. In the present paper, it is shown that fusion performance has been significantly improved in JT-60U for reversed shear discharges with an L-mode edge in a thermonuclear fusion regime, so that the transient fusion amplification factor defined as below would be in excess of unity.In JT-60U, the experimental campaign of the reversed shear discharges aiming at high fusion amplification factor ͑Q͒ has been intensively performed with D beams into D plasmas. The confinement properties for the reversed shear discharges created in JT-60U are characterized by (i) the significant reduction of heat and particle transport for electrons as well as ions around the internal transport barrier (ITB), (ii) a large extension of the enhanced confinement region up...

No abstract