The JET 2019-2020 scientific and technological programme exploited the results of years of concerted scientific and engineering work, including the ITER-like wall (ILW: Be wall and W divertor) installed in 2010, improved diagnostic capabilities now fully available, a major Neutral Beam Injection (NBI) upgrade providing record power in 2019-2020, and tested the technical & procedural preparation for safe operation with tritium. Research along three complementary axes yielded a wealth of new results. Firstly, the JET plasma programme delivered scenarios suitable for high fusion power and alpha particle physics in the coming D-T campaign (DTE2), with record sustained neutron rates, as well as plasmas for clarifying the impact of isotope mass on plasma core, edge and plasma-wall interactions, and for ITER pre-fusion power operation. The efficacy of the newly installed Shattered Pellet Injector for mitigating disruption forces and runaway electrons was demonstrated. Secondly, research on the consequences of long-term exposure to JET-ILW plasma was completed, with emphasis on wall damage and fuel retention, and with analyses of wall materials and dust particles that will help validate assumptions and codes for design & operation of ITER and DEMO. Thirdly, the nuclear technology programme aiming to deliver maximum technological return from operations in D, T and D-T benefited from the highest D-D neutron yield in years, securing results for validating radiation transport and activation codes, and nuclear data for ITER.

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Alpha particles with energies on the order of megaelectronvolts will be the main source of plasma heating in future magnetic confinement fusion reactors. Instead of heating fuel ions, most of the energy of alpha particles is transferred to electrons in the plasma. Furthermore, alpha particles can also excite Alfvénic instabilities, which were previously considered to be detrimental to the performance of the fusion device. Here we report improved thermal ion confinement in the presence of megaelectronvolts ions and strong fast ion-driven Alfvénic instabilities in recent experiments on the Joint European Torus. Detailed transport analysis of these experiments reveals turbulence suppression through a complex multi-scale mechanism that generates large-scale zonal flows. This holds promise for more economical operation of fusion reactors with dominant alpha particle heating and ultimately cheaper fusion electricity.

Conventional solar cell efficiencies are capped by the ~31% Shockley–Queisser limit because, even with an optimally chosen bandgap, some red photons will go unabsorbed and the excess energy of the blue photons is wasted as heat. Here we demonstrate a “quantum ratchet” device that avoids this limitation by inserting a pair of linked states that form a metastable photoelectron trap in the bandgap. It is designed both to reduce non-radiative recombination, and to break the Shockley–Queisser limit by introducing an additional “sequential two photon absorption” (STPA) excitation channel across the bandgap. We realise the quantum ratchet concept with a semiconductor nanostructure. It raises the electron lifetime in the metastable trap by ~104, and gives a STPA channel that increases the photocurrent by a factor of ~50%. This result illustrates a new paradigm for designing ultra-efficient photovoltaic devices.