HIGH PERFORMANCE STATIONARY DISCHARGES IN THE DIII-D TOKAMAK.

Download or read book HIGH PERFORMANCE STATIONARY DISCHARGES IN THE DIII-D TOKAMAK. written by 45th ANNUAL MEETING OF DIVISION OF PLASM. and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent experiments in the DIII-D tokamak [J.L. Luxon, Nucl. Fusion 42,614 (2002)] have demonstrated high {beta} with good confinement quality under stationary conditions. Two classes of stationary discharges are observed--low q{sub 95} discharges with sawteeth and higher q{sub 95} without sawteeth. The discharges are deemed stationary when the plasma conditions are maintained for times greater than the current profile relaxation time. In both cases the normalized fusion performance ({beta}{sub N}H{sub 89P}/q{sub 95}{sup 2}) reaches or exceeds the value of this parameter projected for Q{sub fus} = 10 in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) design [R. Aymar, et al., Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 44, 519 (2002)]. The presence of sawteeth reduces the maximum achievable normalized {beta}, while confinement quality (confinement time relative to scalings) is largely independent of q{sub 95}. Even with the reduced {beta} limit, the normalized fusion performance maximizes at the lowest q{sub 95}. Projections to burning plasma conditions are discussed, including the methodology of the projection and the key physics issues which still require investigation.