Neutral beam heating data from JET have been analysed in detail to determine what proportion of the current is driven non-inductively. It is found that in low density limiter discharges, currents of the order of 0.5 MA are driven, while in H-mode plasmas currents of the order of 0.7 MA are measured. These measured currents are found to be in reasonable agreement with theoretical predictions based on neoclassical models. In low density plasmas the beam driven current is large while the neoclassical bootstrap current dominates H-mode plasmas.

Results are presented from a series of dedicated experiments carried out on JET in tritium, DT, deuterium and hydrogen plasmas to determine the dependence of the H mode power threshold on the plasma isotopic mass. The Pthr ∝ Aeff-1 scaling is established over the whole isotopic range. This result makes it possible for a fusion reactor with a 50:50 DT mixture to access the H mode regime with about 20% less power than that needed in a DD mixture. Results on the first systematic measurements of the power necessary for the transition of the plasma to the type I ELM regime, which occurs after the transition to H mode, are also in agreement with the Aeff-1 scaling. For a subset of discharges, measurements of Te and Ti at the top of the profile pedestal have been obtained, indicating a weak influence of the isotopic mass on the critical edge temperature thought to be necessary for the H mode transition.

The paper describes the content of an H-mode confinement database that has been assembled for the ITER project. Data were collected from six machines of different sizes and shapes: ASDEX, DIII-D, JET, JFT-2M, PBX-M and PDX. A detailed description of the criteria used in the selection of the data and the definition of each of the variables is given. The paper also presents an analysis of the conditions of the database, the scalings (power law and offset linear) of the data with both dimensional and dimensionless variables, and predictions of the expected confinement time for ITER.

The temperature profiles produced by various heating profiles are calculated from local heat transport models. The models take the heat flux to be the sum of heat diffusion and a non-diffusive heat flow, consistent with local measurements of heat transport. Two models are developed analytically in detail: (i) a heat pinch or excess temperature gradient model with constant coefficients; and (ii) a non-linear heat diffusion coefficient (χ) model. Both models predict weak (≲20%) temperature profile responses to physically relevant changes in the heat deposition profile – primarily because the temperature profile is a double integral of the heating profile. The model predictions are shown to agree with JET data for a variety of heating profiles ranging from peaked on-axis through approximately flat (NBI at high density) to localized off-axis (ICRH). The modest temperature profile responses that result from the models clarify why temperature profiles in many tokamaks are often characterized as exhibiting a high degree of ‘profile consistency’. Global transport scaling laws are also derived from the two models. The non-linear model with χ ∝ dT/dr produces a non-linear energy confinement time (L-mode) scaling with input power, . The constant heat pinch or excess temperature gradient model leads to the offset linear law for the total stored energy W with Pin, W = τinc Pin + W(0), which describes JET auxiliary heating data quite well. It also provides definitions for the incremental energy confinement time , the heating effectiveness η, and the energy offset W(0). Considering both the temperature profile responses and the global transport scaling, the constant heat pinch or excess temperature gradient model is found to best characterize the present JET data. Finally, new methods are proposed for interpreting auxiliary heating data in terms of these local transport models.

The scaling of the energy confinement in H-mode plasmas with different hydrogenic isotopes (H, D, D-T and T) is investigated in JET. For ELM-free H-modes the thermal energy confinement time τ th is found to decrease weakly with the isotope mass (τ th ~ M-0.25 ± 0.22) whilst in ELMy H-modes the energy confinement time shows practically no mass dependence (τ th ~ M 0.03 ± 0.1). Detailed local transport analysis of the ELMy H-mode plasmas reveals that the confinement in the edge region increases strongly with the isotope mass whereas the confinement in the core region decreases with mass (τ thcore ∝ M-0.16) in approximate agreement with theoretical models of the gyro-Bohm type (τ gB ~ M-0.2).