EFDA-JET-CP(01)02/24

Towards Full Current Drive Operation in JET

In a steady-state tokamak reactor where the plasma current is entirely sustained by non-inductive means, it is now well recognised that the self-generated bootstrap current should provide a significant fraction of the plasma current to minimise the external current drive requirement. To investigate the physics of full current drive operation, experiments with Internal Transport Barriers (ITB) have been carried out in JET during the 2000-2001 campaign at reduced plasma current with a poloidal beta, bp, reaching 1.65 (Ip = 1.5-2MA, q95 = 5.5-8, Gas-Box divertor). Two series of experiments are reported in this paper. Discharges with a zero-loop voltage phase have been produced with 0.7-0.8MA of self-generated bootstrap current combined with either Neutral Beam Current Drive, NBCD, (section 1) or the sum of NBCD and off-axis Lower Hybrid Current Drive, LHCD (section 2). We have found that the off-axis LH current is essential to control the q-profile evolution when approaching steady-state conditions.
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EFDC010224 969.34 Kb