Numerical studies on the stability of kink and resistive tearing modes in a current-carrying linear stellarator are presented for various current profiles and helical fields. In the case of an ℓ = 2 helical field, the magnetic shear vanishes and the stability diagram is given by the straight lines with ισ + ιδ = const., where ισ is the rotational transform due to the plasma current and ιδ is that due to the helical field. For the ℓ = 2 stellarator with , the magnetohydrodynamic stability against kink and tearing modes is improved compared to that in tokamaks. When an ℓ = 3 helical component exists, magnetic shear plays an important role in the stability properties. The stability diagrams become fairly complex; they are, however, understandable from properties of the Euler equation. It should be noted that the internal kink modes are made more unstable than in a tokamak, because of the ℓ = 3 helical field.

Experimental studies on the origin of metal impurities in DIVA are described. Three processes of metal impurity release, i.e. ion sputtering, evaporation and arcing, have been identified. Among these processes, ion sputtering is the dominant process in the quiet phase of the discharge, which is characterized by the lack of spikes in the loop voltage as well as by the fact that no heat flux concentration towards a specific part of the first wall takes place. Moreover, it is demonstrated that a honeycomb structure can decrease the metal impurity release.

Neutral-beam power of up to 1.2 MW injected into the plasma has produced a volume-averaged ⟨β⟩ of up to 2.6% and a central beta β0 of up to 7%, due to the thermal components in the JFT-2 tokamak. In these beam-dominated discharges, the magnetohydrodynamic behaviour was studied. Four types of internal oscillations were observed: i) enhanced sawtooth oscillations with long repetition time and large sawtooth amplitude; ii) round sawtooth oscillations and/or reduced sawtooth oscillations with short repetition time and small sawtooth amplitude; iii) high-frequency oscillations without sawtooth oscillations, and iv) high-frequency oscillations with sawtooth oscillations. The measured beta values are compared with the critical ones as found from high-n ballooning-mode analysis, and the relationship between MHD behaviour and beta values is also investigated.

Significant progress in the extension of pulse durations of powerful negative ion beams has been made to realize the neutral beam injectors for JT-60SA and ITER. In order to overcome common issues of the long-pulse production/acceleration of negative ion beams in JT-60SA and ITER, new technologies have been developed in the JT-60SA ion source and the MeV accelerator in Japan Atomic Energy Agency.As for the long-pulse production of high-current negative ions for the JT-60SA ion source, the pulse durations have been successfully increased from 30 s at 13 A on JT-60U to 100 s at 15 A by modifying the JT-60SA ion source, which satisfies the required pulse duration of 100 s and 70% of the rated beam current for JT-60SA. This progress was based on the R&D efforts for the temperature control of the plasma grid and uniform negative ion productions with the modified tent-shaped filter field configuration. Moreover, each parameter of the required beam energy, current and pulse has been achieved individually by these R&D efforts. The developed techniques are useful to design the ITER ion source because the sustainment of the caesium coverage in the large extraction area is one of the common issues between JT-60SA and ITER.As for the long-pulse acceleration of high power density beams in the MeV accelerator for ITER, the pulse duration of MeV-class negative ion beams has been extended by more than 2 orders of magnitude by modifying the extraction grid with a high cooling capability and a high transmission of negative ions. A long-pulse acceleration of 60 s has been achieved at 70 MW m −2 (683 keV, 100 A m −2 ) which has reached the power density of JT-60SA level of 65 MW m −2 . No degradations of the voltage holding capability of the acceleration voltage and the beam optics due to the distortion of the acceleration grids have been observed in this power density level.These results are the longest pulse durations of high-current and high-power-density negative ion beams in the world.

ICRF heating of impurity-free tokamak plasmas is studied in DIVA. The frequency is fixed at 25 MHz, which is a second-harmonic cyclotron frequency of deuteron with a toroidal magnetic field of 16.4 kG. The toroidal field BT and the ratio of proton-to-deuteron density ϵp are varied over ranges of 12 ⩽ BT ⩽ 19 kG and 2 ⪅ ϵp ⪅ 40%, respectively. The most favourable ion heating is obtained at BT = 18 kG and ϵp = 5 ∼ 10%. Ion temperature increases from 200 to 300 eV were measured by charge-exchange neutral analysis and also by spectroscopy, where 100 kW RF net power were applied. The results are consistent with mode-conversion theory.