A new method of actively modifying the plasma-wall interaction was tested on the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor. A laser was used to introduce a directed lithium aerosol into the discharge scrape-off layer. The lithium introduced in this fashion ablated and migrated preferentially to the limiter contact points. This allowed the plasma-wall interaction to be influenced in situ and in real time by external means. Significant improvement in energy confinement and fusion neutron production rate as well as a reduction in the plasma Zeff have been documented in a neutral beam heated plasma. The introduction of a metallic aerosol into the plasma edge increased the internal inductance of the plasma column and also resulted in prompt heating of core electrons in ohmic plasmas. Preliminary evidence also suggests that the introduction of an aerosol leads to both edge poloidal velocity shear and edge electric field shear.

A new spectroscopic diagnostic was developed to measure poloidal velocity profiles of Tokamak fusion test reactor (TFTR) plasmas. Carbon poloidal velocities were measured using the Doppler shift of the C VI 5291 Å impurity line of both intrinsic emission and charge exchange emission from neutral beams. Poloidal velocities are typically small (vθ⩽104 m/s) requiring small wavelength shifts (Δλ⩽0.2 Å) to be measured. However, the high central ion temperatures in TFTR required the use of a low dispersion spectrometer to view the entire linewidth (full width at half maximum ⩽25 Å). A very high throughput spectrometer/detector system was assembled to achieve the necessary precision in vθ. Statistical errors in the chord-averaged poloidal velocity less than 100 m/s have been obtained. The short focal length spectrometer features f/1.8 input optics, a transmission grating, and refractive optics. A thinned back-illuminated charge coupled device detector provided a high quantum efficiency (QE=75%). The diagnostic had 20 ms time resolution and a radial resolution of ⩽3.5 cm after an inversion. Two symmetric up/down views were used to eliminate atomic physics effects that would otherwise distort the measured rotation velocity. This diagnostic complemented the measurements of Ti, vφ, and ni from a charge exchange spectroscopy system, allowing the determination of radial electric field profiles using the force balance equation.

Recent experiments in D-T plasmas on the JET and TFTR tokamaks have evaluated a wide range of ITER relevant ion cyclotron heating scenarios. Absorption of fast waves at the second-harmonic tritium resonance has provided bulk ion heating in TFTR supershots and electron heating in JET H-mode discharges. In JET, deuterium minority heating has generated 1.7 MW of fusion power with 6 MW of radio frequency power giving a record steady-state Q-value of 0.22. Strong bulk ion heating has been achieved with He-3 minority heating with central ion temperatures up to 13 keV being produced in H-modes with a density of 3.6 x 10(19) m(-3) Hydrogen, deuterium and He-3 minority heating methods have produced plasmas with normalized confinement times greater than or equal to that required by ITER for ignition. These H-modes are characterized by small-amplitude, high-frequency ELMs, each of which transports less than 1.5% of the plasma energy content to the limiters. The heavy minority scheme of tritium in a deuterium plasma has been demonstrated both as a heating scheme and a generator of suprathermal neutrons. On TFTR mode conversion to an ion Bernstein wave has achieved central bulk ion heating in supershots with target ion temperatures greater than 20 keV.

The Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) (R. J. Hawryluk, to be published in Rev. Mod. Phys.) experiments on high-temperature plasmas, that culminated in the study of deuterium–tritium D–T plasmas containing significant populations of energetic alpha particles, spanned over two decades from conception to completion. During the design of TFTR, the key physics issues were magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equilibrium and stability, plasma energy transport, impurity effects, and plasma reactivity. Energetic particle physics was given less attention during this phase because, in part, of the necessity to address the issues that would create the conditions for the study of energetic particles and also the lack of diagnostics to study the energetic particles in detail. The worldwide tokamak program including the contributions from TFTR made substantial progress during the past two decades in addressing the fundamental issues affecting the performance of high-temperature plasmas and the behavior of energetic particles. Th...

The Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) (R. J. Hawryluk, to be published in Rev. Mod. Phys.) experiments on high-temperature plasmas, that culminated in the study of deuterium–tritium D–T plasmas containing significant populations of energetic alpha particles, spanned over two decades from conception to completion. During the design of TFTR, the key physics issues were magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equilibrium and stability, plasma energy transport, impurity effects, and plasma reactivity. Energetic particle physics was given less attention during this phase because, in part, of the necessity to address the issues that would create the conditions for the study of energetic particles and also the lack of diagnostics to study the energetic particles in detail. The worldwide tokamak program including the contributions from TFTR made substantial progress during the past two decades in addressing the fundamental issues affecting the performance of high-temperature plasmas and the behavior of energetic particles. The progress has been the result of the construction of new facilities, which enabled the production of high-temperature well-confined plasmas, development of sophisticated diagnostic techniques to study both the background plasma and the resulting energetic fusion products, and computational techniques to both interpret the experimental results and to predict the outcome of experiments.

We have made and installed a multipulse Nd:YAG Thomson scattering system for measuring electron temperature and density profiles in the throat of the divertor of the Alcator C-Mod machine. The observing head is located in the vacuum vessel in a re-entrant chamber. It is optically fast and very compact. A system for providing feedback to maintain the laser beam alignment is a part of the observing head assembly. The head is designed to minimize eddy currents, and have a very rigid adjustable mounting to resist the forces generated by the eddy currents during plasma disruptions. A four wavelength polychromator using 25 element avalanche photodiode arrays for spatial resolution has been designed and built for this system. Two of these polychromators and a single observing head will provide 50 spatial resolution elements.

The Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) has been operating safely and routinely with deuterium-tritium fuel for more than two years. In this time, TFTR has produced a number of record breaking results including core fusion power, ∼ 2 MW/m3, comparable to that expected for ITER. Advances in wall conditioning via lithium pellet injection have played an essential role in achieving these results. Deuterium-tritium operation has also provided a special opportunity to address the two years of operation was approximately 40%. Recently the in-torus tritium inventory was reduced by half through a combination of glow discharge cleaning, moist-air soaks, and plasma discharge cleaning. The tritium inventory is not a constraint in continued operations. Recent results from TFTR in the context of plasma wall interactions and deuterium-tritium issues are presented.

The Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) is a large tokamak which has performed experiments with 50:50 deuterium-tritium fuelled plasmas. Since 1993, TFTR has produced about 1090 D-T plasmas using about 100 grams of tritium and producing about 1.6 GJ of D-T fusion energy. These plasmas have significant populations of 3.5 MeV alphas (the charged D-T fusion product). TFTR research has focused on alpha particle confinement, alpha driven modes, and alpha heating studies. Maximum D-T fusion power production has aided these studies, requiring simultaneously operation at high input heating power and large energy confinement time (to produce the highest temperature and density), while maintaining low impurity content. The principal limitation to the TFTR fusion power production was the disruptive stability limit. Secondary limitations were the confinement time, and limiter power handling capability.

Experiments in the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) [Phys. Plasmas 2, 2176 (1995)] have explored several novel regimes of improved tokamak confinement in deuterium–tritium (D–T) plasmas, including plasmas with reduced or reversed magnetic shear in the core and high-current plasmas with increased shear in the outer region (high li). New techniques have also been developed to enhance the confinement in these regimes by modifying the plasma-limiter interaction through in situ deposition of lithium. In reversed-shear plasmas, transitions to enhanced confinement have been observed at plasma currents up to 2.2 MA (qa≈4.3), accompanied by the formation of internal transport barriers, where large radial gradients develop in the temperature and density profiles. Experiments have been performed to elucidate the mechanism of the barrier formation and its relationship with the magnetic configuration and with the heating characteristics. The increased stability of high-current, high-li plasmas produced by rapid expansion of the minor cross section, coupled with improvement in the confinement by lithium deposition has enabled the achievement of high fusion power, up to 8.7 MW, with D–T neutral beam heating. The physics of fusion alpha-particle confinement has been investigated in these regimes, including the interactions of the alphas with endogenous plasma instabilities and externally applied waves in the ion cyclotron range of frequencies. In D–T plasmas with q0>1 and weak magnetic shear in the central region, a toroidal Alfvén eigenmode instability driven purely by the alpha particles has been observed for the first time. The interactions of energetic ions with ion Bernstein waves produced by mode conversion from fast waves in mixed-species plasmas have been studied as a possible mechanism for transferring the energy of the alphas to fuel ions.

Wall conditioning in the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) [K. M. McGuire et al., Phys. Plasmas 2, 2176 (1995)] by injection of lithium pellets into the plasma has resulted in large improvements in deuterium–tritium fusion power production (up to 10.7 MW), the Lawson triple product (up to 1021 m−3 s keV), and energy confinement time (up to 330 ms). The maximum plasma current for access to high-performance supershots has been increased from 1.9 to 2.7 MA, leading to stable operation at plasma stored energy values greater than 5 MJ. The amount of lithium on the limiter and the effectiveness of its action are maximized through (1) distributing the Li over the limiter surface by injection of four Li pellets into Ohmic plasmas of increasing major and minor radius, and (2) injection of four Li pellets into the Ohmic phase of supershot discharges before neutral-beam heating is begun.

Recent experiments in the ion cyclotron range of frequencies (ICRF) in the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor [Fusion Technol. 21, 13 (1992)] are discussed. These experiments include mode conversion heating and current drive, fast wave current drive, and heating of low (L)- mode deuterium–tritium (D–T) plasmas in both the hydrogen minority and second harmonic tritium regimes. In mode conversion heating, a central electron temperature of 10 keV was attained with 3.3 MW of radio-frequency power. In mode conversion current drive experiments, up to 130 kA of current was noninductively driven, on and off axis, and the current profiles were modified. Fast wave current drive experiments have produced 70–80 kA of noninductively driven current. Heating of L-mode deuterium and D–T plasmas by hydrogen minority ICRF has been compared. Finally, heating of L-mode D–T plasmas at the second harmonic of the tritium cyclotron frequency has been demonstrated.

The first experimental demonstration that mode conversion from the fast magnetosonic wave to an ion Bernstein wave can efficiently heat electrons and drive current with low field side antennas in a tokamak plasma is reported. Up to 130 kA of current was noninductively driven, on and off axis, and the resultant current profiles were measured in the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor. In heating experiments, 10 keV peak electron temperatures were produced with 3.3 MW of radio-frequency heating power.

The detailed electron temperature profile (spatial resolution: 0.86 cm) of a low density JFT-2M plasma is measured with the TV Thomson scattering system (TVTS). Flat profiles showing the electron temperature shapes of m = 2/n = 1 islands are presented, which are in contrast to that without islands. On the other hand, the m = 2/n = 1 islands are effectively suppressed with local ECRH heating.

The effect of isotope on confinement in high-recycling, L-mode plasmas is studied on the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) [see D. M. Meade, J. Fusion Energy 7, 107 (1988)] by comparing hydrogen and deuterium plasmas with the same magnetic field and similar electron densities and heating power, with both Ohmic and deuterium-neutral-beam heating. Following a long operational period in deuterium, nominally hydrogen plasmas were created through hydrogen glow discharge and hydrogen gas puffing in Ohmic plasmas, which saturated the exposed limiter surface with hydrogen and raised the H/(H+D) ratio from 10±3% to 65±5%. Ohmic deuterium discharges obtained higher stored energy and lower loop voltage than hydrogen discharges with similar limiter conditions. Neutral-beam power scans were conducted in L-mode plasmas at minor radii of 50 and 80 cm, with plasma currents of 0.7 and 1.4 MA. To minimize transport differences from the beam deposition profile and beam heating, deuterium neutral beams were used to heat the plasmas of both isotopes. Total stored energy increased approximately 20% from nominally hydrogen plasmas to deuterium plasmas during auxiliary heating. Of this increase about half can be attributed to purely classical differences in the energy content of unthermalized beam ions. Kinetic measurements indicate a consistent but small increase in central electron temperature and total stored electron energy in deuterium relative to hydrogen plasmas, but no change in total ion stored energy. No significant differences in particle transport, momentum transport, and sawtooth behavior are observed. Overall, only a small improvement (∼10%) in global energy confinement time of the thermal plasma is seen between operation in hydrogen and deuterium.

During the D-T campaign on TFTR, safe and successful operation has been demonstrated with tritium fuel enabling a broad range of physics studies. Transport studies have focused on the formation of internal transport barriers in the enhanced reversed shear regime. Current profile modification has been employed to study MHD stability in both reversed shear and high l(i) discharges. Several important alpha physics topics have been studied including the confinement and loss of alpha particles in both quiescent and MHD active discharges and the effect of alpha-particle heating and alpha-particle destabilization of TAE modes. Plans for future experiments are being discussed.

Fusion-produced alpha particles with energy less than or equal to 0.7 MeV have been spectroscopically observed in the core of a deuterium-tritium plasma in the TFTR tokamak at alpha densities of 3 x 10(16) m(-3). During a sawtooth-free discharge, the measured energy spectra at r/a = 0.3 are in good agreement with those predicted on the basis of collisional transport. Time-resolved measurements during the alpha thermalization after alpha source turn-off show decay of the distribution function to lower energies consistent with the classical slowing-down time of 0.5 s.

The confinement and heating of supershot plasmas are significantly enhanced with tritium beam injection relative to deuterium injection in the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor [Plasma Phys. Controlled Fusion 26, 11 (1984)]. The global energy confinement and local thermal transport are analyzed for deuterium and tritium fueled plasmas to quantify their dependence on the average mass of the hydrogenic ions. Radial profiles of the deuterium and tritium densities are determined from the D–T fusion neutron emission profile. The inferred scalings with average isotopic mass are quite strong, with τE∝〈A〉0.85±0.20, τEthermal∝〈A〉0.89±0.20, χitot∝〈A〉−2.6±0.5, and De∝〈A〉−1.4±0.2 at fixed Pinj. For fixed local plasma parameters χitot∝〈A〉−1.8±0.4 is obtained. The quoted 2σ uncertainties include contributions from both diagnostic errors and shot irreproducibility, and are conservatively constructed to attribute the entire scatter in the regressed parameters to uncertainties in the exponent on plasma mass.