In tokamak plasmas with a tearing mode, strong scattering of high power millimeter waves, as used for heating and noninductive current drive, is shown to occur. This new wave scattering phenomenon is shown to be related to the passage of the O point of a magnetic island through the high power heating beam. The density determines the detailed phasing of the scattered radiation relative to the O-point passage. The scattering power depends strongly nonlinearly on the heating beam power.

Recent experiments in the RTP tokamak have shown that the electron temperature, Te, profile in EC heated L mode discharges can have only a small number of distinct profile shapes, depending on the location of the additional heating. The sharp transitions between the profile shapes are associated with the loss or gain of a low rational q surface. These observations suggest that the electron thermal diffusivity χe is a direct function of the safety factor q, with alternating layers of low and high χe. It is shown that such a model not only excellently describes the distinct profile shapes but also predicts other, observed but so far unexplained, phenomena, such as sharp off-axis maxima of Te observed with off-axis heating at specific radii.

Controlled experiments on the suppression of the m/n = 2/1 tearing mode with electron cyclotron heating and current drive in TEXTOR are reported. The mode was produced reproducibly by an externally applied rotating perturbation field, allowing a systematic study of its suppression. Heating inside the island of the mode is shown to be the dominant suppression mechanism in these experiments. An extrapolation of these findings to ITER indicates that the projected system for suppression of the tearing mode could be significantly more effective than present estimates indicate, which only consider the effect of the current drive but not of the heating inside the island.

The Magnum-PSI facility is available for plasma-material interaction studies. • Magnum-PSI is capable to reach relevant plasma parameters for the ITER divertor. • Particle fluxes over 10 25 m-2 s-1 and heat fluxes of up to 50 MWm-2 are obtained. • Particle fluences of up to 10 30 particles m-2 have been achieved. • Linear regression and artificial neural network analysis have been applied.

Full suppression of neoclassical tearing modes (NTMs) using electron cyclotron current drive (ECCD) should be reached before mode locking (stop of rotation) makes suppression impossible. For an ITER scenario 2 plasma, the similar time scales for locking and island growth necessitate the combined modelling of the growth of the mode and its slow down due to wall induced drag. Using such a model, the maximum allowed latency between the seeding of the mode and the start of ECCD deposition and maximum deviation in the radial position are determined. The maximum allowed latency is determined for two limiting models for island growth; the polarization model with w marg = 2 cm, representing the worst case, and the transport model with w marg = 6 cm, representing the best case. NTMs with seed island widths up to 9.5 cm and 12 cm for the 2/1 and the 3/2 NTM, respectively, are suppressible. The maximum allowed latency is 1.05 s and 2.95 s for the 2/1 and 3/2 NTM, respectively, for the worst case model. Radial misalignment should not exceed 7-10 mm for the 2/1 NTM and 5-16 mm for the 3/2 NTM depending on the model for island growth. As long as the alignment suffices, it does not reduce the maximum allowed latency. Mode locking has serious implications for any real-time NTM control system on ITER that aims to suppress NTMs by ECCD.