Operating a full tungsten actively cooled tokamak: overview of WEST first phase of operation

WEST is an MA class superconducting, actively cooled, full tungsten (W) tokamak, designed to operate in long pulses up to 1000 s. In support of ITER operation and DEMO conceptual activities, key missions of WEST are: (i) qualification of high heat flux plasma-facing components in integrating both technological and physics aspects in relevant heat and particle exhaust conditions, particularly for the tungsten monoblocks foreseen in ITER divertor; (ii) integrated steady-state operation at high confinement, with a focus on power exhaust issues. During the phase 1 of operation (2017–2020), a set of actively cooled ITER-grade plasma facing unit prototypes was integrated into the inertially cooled W coated startup lower divertor. Up to 8.8 MW of RF power has been coupled to the plasma and divertor heat flux of up to 6 MW m−2 were reached. Long pulse operation was started, using the upper actively cooled divertor, with a discharge of about 1 min achieved. This paper gives an overview of the results achieved in phase 1. Perspectives for phase 2, operating with the full capability of the device with the complete ITER-grade actively cooled lower divertor, are also described

Velocity-space sensitivity of the time-of-flight neutron spectrometer at JET

The velocity-space sensitivities of fast-ion diagnostics are often described by so-called weight functions. Recently, we formulated weight functions showing the velocity-space sensitivity of the often dominant beam-target part of neutron energy spectra. These weight functions for neutron emission spectrometry (NES) are independent of the particular NES diagnostic. Here we apply these NES weight functions to the time-of-flight spectrometer TOFOR at JET. By taking the instrumental response function of TOFOR into account, we calculate time-of-flight NES weight functions that enable us to directly determine the velocity-space sensitivity of a given part of a measured time-of-flight spectrum from TOFOR

Relationship of edge localized mode burst times with divertor flux loop signal phase in JET

A phase relationship is identified between sequential edge localized modes (ELMs) occurrence times in a set of H-mode tokamak plasmas to the voltage measured in full flux azimuthal loops in the divertor region. We focus on plasmas in the Joint European Torus where a steady H-mode is sustained over several seconds, during which ELMs are observed in the Be II emission at the divertor. The ELMs analysed arise from intrinsic ELMing, in that there is no deliberate intent to control the ELMing process by external means. We use ELM timings derived from the Be II signal to perform direct time domain analysis of the full flux loop VLD2 and VLD3 signals, which provide a high cadence global measurement proportional to the voltage induced by changes in poloidal magnetic flux. Specifically, we examine how the time interval between pairs of successive ELMs is linked to the time-evolving phase of the full flux loop signals. Each ELM produces a clear early pulse in the full flux loop signals, whose peak time is used to condition our analysis. The arrival time of the following ELM, relative to this pulse, is found to fall into one of two categories: (i) prompt ELMs, which are directly paced by the initial response seen in the flux loop signals; and (ii) all other ELMs, which occur after the initial response of the full flux loop signals has decayed in amplitude. The times at which ELMs in category (ii) occur, relative to the first ELM of the pair, are clustered at times when the instantaneous phase of the full flux loop signal is close to its value at the time of the first ELM