Progress in the area of MHD stability and disruptions, since the publication of the 1999 ITER Physics Basis document Nucl. Fusion 39 2137-2664, is reviewed. Recent theoretical and experimental research has made important advances in both understanding and control of MHD stability in tokamak plasmas. Sawteeth are anticipated in the ITER baseline ELMy H-mode scenario, but the tools exist to avoid or control them through localized current drive or fast ion generation. Active control of other MHD instabilities will most likely be also required in ITER. Extrapolation from existing experiments indicates that stabilization of neoclassical tearing modes by highly localized feedback-controlled current drive should be possible in ITER. Resistive wall modes are a key issue for S128 Chapter 3: MHD stability, operational limits and disruptions advanced scenarios, but again, existing experiments indicate that these modes can be stabilized by a combination of plasma rotation and direct feedback control with non-axisymmetric coils. Reduction of error fields is a requirement for avoiding non-rotating magnetic island formation and for maintaining plasma rotation to help stabilize resistive wall modes. Recent experiments have shown the feasibility of reducing error fields to an acceptable level by means of non-axisymmetric coils, possibly controlled by feedback. The MHD stability limits associated with advanced scenarios are becoming well understood theoretically, and can be extended by tailoring of the pressure and current density profiles as well as by other techniques mentioned here. There have been significant advances also in the control of disruptions, most notably by injection of massive quantities of gas, leading to reduced halo current fractions and a larger fraction of the total thermal and magnetic energy dissipated by radiation. These advances in disruption control are supported by the development of means to predict impending disruption, most notably using neural networks. In addition to these advances in means to control or ameliorate the consequences of MHD instabilities, there has been significant progress in improving physics understanding and modelling. This progress has been in areas including the mechanisms governing NTM growth and seeding, in understanding the damping controlling RWM stability and in modelling RWM feedback schemes. For disruptions there has been continued progress on the instability mechanisms that underlie various classes of disruption, on the detailed modelling of halo currents and forces and in refining predictions of quench rates and disruption power loads. Overall the studies reviewed in this chapter demonstrate that MHD instabilities can be controlled, avoided or ameliorated to the extent that they should not compromise ITER operation, though they will necessarily impose a range of constraints.

͑2000͔͒ reveal the commonalities of resistive wall mode ͑RWM͒ stabilization by sufficiently fast toroidal plasma rotation in devices of different size and aspect ratio. In each device the weakly damped n = 1 RWM manifests itself by resonant field amplification ͑RFA͒ of externally applied n = 1 magnetic fields, which increases with the plasma pressure. Probing DIII-D and JET plasmas with similar ideal magnetohydrodynamic ͑MHD͒ stability properties with externally applied magnetic n = 1 fields, shows that the resulting RFA is independent of the machine size. In each device the drag resulting from RFA slows the toroidal plasma rotation and can lead to the onset of an unstable RWM. The critical plasma rotation required for stable operation in the plasma center decreases with increasing q 95 , which is explained by the inward shift of q surfaces where the critical rotation remains constant. The quantitative agreement of the critical rotation normalized to the inverse Alfvén time at the q = 2 surface in similar DIII-D and JET plasmas supports the independence of the RWM stabilization mechanism of machine size and indicates the importance of the q = 2 surface. At low aspect ratio the required fraction of the Alfvén velocity increases significantly. The ratio of the critical rotation in similar NSTX and DIII-D plasmas can be explained by trapped particles not contributing to the RWM stabilization, which is consistent with stabilization mechanisms that are based on ion Landau damping. Alternatively, the ratio of the required rotation to the sound wave velocity remains independent of aspect ratio.

International Atomic Energy Agency

MAST is one of the new generation of large, purpose-built spherical tokamaks (STs) now becoming operational, designed to investigate the properties of the ST in large, collisionless plasmas. The first six months of MAST operations have been remarkably successful. Operationally, both merging-compression and the more usual solenoid induction schemes have been demonstrated, the former providing over 400 kA of plasma current with no demand on solenoid flux. Good vacuum conditions and operational conditions, particularly after boronization in trimethylated boron, have provided plasma current of over 1 MA with central plasma temperatures (ohmic) of order 1 keV. The Hugill and Greenwald limits can be exceeded and H mode achieved at modest additional NBI power. Moreover, particle and energy confinement show an immediate increase at the L-H transition, unlike the case of START, where this became apparent only at the highest plasma currents. Halo currents are small, with low toroidal peaking factors, in accordance with theoretical predictions, and there is evidence of a resilience to the major disruption.

No abstract

From an understanding of the processes that cause a marginally unstable eigenmode of the system to sweep in frequency, it is shown how the absolute peak amplitude of the mode can be determined from the spectroscopic measurements of the frequency sweeping rate, e.g. with Mirnov coils outside the plasma. In a first attempt to implement such a diagnostic calculation, the MISHKA code (Mikhailovskii A B et al 1997 Plasma Phys. Rep. 23 844) is used to determine the global mode structure of toroidal Alfvén eigenmodes (TAEs) (Cheng C Z et al 1985 Ann. Phys. (NY) 161 21) observed in the MAST spherical tokamak (Sykes A et al 2001 Nucl. Fusion 41 1423). Simulations using the HAGIS code (Pinches S D 1996 PhD Thesis The University of Nottingham, Pinches S D et al 1998 Comput. Phys. Commun. 111 131) are then made, replicating the experimentally observed sweeping phenomena. The fundamental theory is then used together with these simulation results to predict the internal field amplitude from the observed frequency sweeping. The calculated mode amplitude is shown to agree with that obtained from Mirnov coil measurements.

The tight aspect ratios (typically A≈1.4) and low magnetic field of spherical tokamak (ST) plasmas, when combined with densities approaching the Greenwald limit, provide a significant challenge for all currently available auxiliary heating and current drive schemes. NBI heating and current drive are difficult to interpret in sub-megampere machines, as in order to achieve suitable penetration into the plasma core, fast ions have to be highly suprathermal and, as a result of the low magnetic field, can be non-adiabatic (i.e. non-conserving of magnetic moment µ0). The physics of NBI heating in START is discussed. The neutral beam injector deployed on START was clearly successful, having been instrumental in producing a world record tokamak toroidal beta of ≈40%. A fast ion Monte Carlo code (LOCUST) is described that was developed to model non-adiabatic fast ion topologies together with a high level of charge exchange loss and cross-field transport (present in START due to an envelope of high density gas surrounding the plasma). Model predictions compare well with experimental data, collected using a scanning neutral particle analyser, bolometric instruments and equilibrium reconstruction using EFIT. In particular, beta calculations based upon reconstruction of the pressure profile (by combining measurements from Thomson scattering, charge exchange recombination spectroscopy and model predictions for the fast ion distribution function) agree well with beta values calculated using EFIT alone (the routine method for calculation of START beta). These results thus provide increased confidence in the ability of STs to sustain high beta high confinement H mode plasmas and in addition indicate that the injected fast ions in collisional START plasmas evolve mainly due to collisional and charge exchange processes, without driving any significant performance degrading fast particle MHD activity.

The developments of advanced tokamak scenarios as well as the employment of a new neutral beam injection (NBI) source with higher power and beam energy up to ≈65 keV have significantly broadened the frequency range and the variety of Alfvén eigenmodes (AEs) excited by the super-Alfvénic NBI on the spherical tokamak MAST. During recent experiments on MAST, several distinct classes of beam-driven AEs have been identified, with different modes being most unstable in different MAST scenarios. In MAST discharges with elevated monotonic q(r)-profiles and NBI power ⩾3 MW, chirping modes starting in the frequency range ⩽150 kHz decreased in frequency down to ≈20 kHz as q(0) decreased and then smoothly transformed to long-living modes with a weakly-varying frequency and a n = 1 kink-mode structure. The bolometer data suggest that the long-living modes can be responsible for fast ion losses on MAST, while the charge-exchange data show that a coupling between these modes and other low-frequency modes can cause a collapse of toroidal plasma rotation with a subsequent disruption. In MAST discharges with reversed magnetic shear, Alfvén cascade eigenmodes in the frequency range 40–180 kHz were observed at a moderate NBI power ⩽2 MW allowing an additional assessment of q(r)-profile evolution in time. A robust reproducible scenario was found on MAST, in which the instability of high-frequency modes in the range 0.4–3.8 MHz and typically with negative toroidal mode numbers was dominating the spectrum of beam-driven AEs. Since the highest frequency of such modes is close to the on-axis ion cyclotron frequency and the polarization study of these modes show a significant parallel perturbed magnetic field, these modes are identified as compressional Alfvén eigenmodes. For investigating the AE spectrum in plasmas with high β, an active AE antenna has been installed on MAST. First measurements of stable AE modes in MAST have been performed successfully and are described here.