The China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR) is the next device in the roadmap for the realization of fusion energy in China, which aims to bridge the gaps between the fusion experimental reactor ITER and the demonstration reactor (DEMO). CFETR will be operated in two phases. Steady-state operation and self-sufficiency will be the two key issues for Phase I with a modest fusion power of up to 200 MW. Phase II aims for DEMO validation with a fusion power over 1 GW. Advanced H-mode physics, high magnetic fields up to 7 T, high frequency electron cyclotron resonance heating and lower hybrid current drive together with off-axis negative-ion neutral beam injection will be developed for achieving steady-state advanced operation. The recent detailed design, research and development (R&D) activities including integrated modeling of operation scenarios, high field magnet, material, tritium plant, remote handling and future plans are introduced in this paper.

Evidence of a nonlinear transition from mitigation to suppression of the edge localized mode (ELM) by using resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs) in the EAST tokamak is presented. This is the first demonstration of ELM suppression with RMPs in slowly rotating plasmas with dominant radio-frequency wave heating. Changes of edge magnetic topology after the transition are indicated by a gradual phase shift in the plasma response field from a linear magneto hydro dynamics modeling result to a vacuum one and a sudden increase of three-dimensional particle flux to the divertor. The transition threshold depends on the spectrum of RMPs and plasma rotation as well as perturbation amplitude. This means that edge topological changes resulting from nonlinear plasma response plays a key role in the suppression of ELM with RMPs. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.115001 Magnetic reconnection and the resultant topological change play an important role in plasma dynamics in both laboratory and space plasma physics research. The formation of an edge stochastic magnetic field caused by resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs) is believed to be the reason for the suppression of periodic crash events near the plasma edge known as the edge localized mode (ELM) observed in the DIII-D tokamak [1]. The ELM causes transient heat loads to the plasma facing components and may degrade them on the next generation fusion device like ITER [2]. The reduction of free energy in the edge pressure gradient and current because of field stochasticity moves the plasma into a stable regime against the ELM [3]. This successful experiment motivated ELM control using RMPs in many other tokamaks [4][5][6][7]. However, the plasma response effect usually shields the external applied RMPs and may significantly reduce the magnetic field stochasticity [8][9][10][11], which makes this mechanism questionable. Different from topological change, the linear peelinglike magneto hydro dynamics (MHD) response has been found to play an important role in ELM control [12][13][14]. Nonlinear plasma response has been observed in the JET totamak [15]. The possible formation of a magnetic island near the plasma edge [16] with a toroidal Fourier mode number n ¼ 1 during ELM suppression by using n ¼ 2 RMP has been recently observed on DIII-D [17]. However, the key difference between ELM suppression and mitigation and the different roles of linear and nonlinear plasma response on ELM suppression are still not clear.In this Letter, we report the first observation of full ELM suppression using low n RMPs in slowly rotating plasmas with dominant radio-frequency (rf) wave heating, which is potentially important for the application of this method for a future fusion device. This is the first observation of full ELM suppression using RMPs in the medium plasma collisionality regime in EAST, and it expands beyond the previous observations of ELM suppression on DIII-D [1,3] and KSTAR [7]. It is found that not only the formation of a magnetic island near the edge [17] but also a critical leve...

A quasiperiodic Er oscillation at a frequency of <4 kHz, much lower than the geodesic-acoustic-mode frequency, with a modulation in edge turbulence preceding and following the low-to-high (L-H) confinement mode transition, has been observed for the first time in the EAST tokamak, using two toroidally separated reciprocating probes. Just prior to the L-H transition, the Er oscillation often evolves into intermittent negative Er spikes. The low-frequency Er oscillation, as well as the Er spikes, is strongly correlated with the turbulence-driven Reynolds stress, thus providing first evidence of the role of the zonal flows in the L-H transition at marginal input power. These new findings not only shed light on the underlying physics mechanism for the L-H transition, but also have significant implications for ITER operations close to the L-H transition threshold power.