As the testing mockup of tritium breeding blanket for DEMO, the Chinese helium cooled ceramic breeder test blanket system (HCCB TBS) is under development by China and will be tested in ITER to verify key tritium breeding blanket technologies. After the approval of the conceptual design of the HCCB TBS by the ITER Organization in 2015, the design optimization and more research and development activities for the HCCB TBS have begun for the preliminary design. This paper gives an overview of the recent progress of the HCCB TBS development in China, including the design optimizations, material development, mockup fabrication and test facility construction.

To support the ITER early non-nuclear operational phase, recent helium experiments have been investigated intensively in the superconducting tokamak EAST equipped with ITER-like Tungsten divertor, under the condition of low injected torque. This paper demonstrates experimental observations from these experiments. In particular, we report the impact of helium concentration on the L-H transition power threshold, energy confinement, and the ELM behavior. Dependences of L-H threshold on electron density, plasma current and magnetic field are also discussed.