Global energy confinement in JT-60 neutral beam heated L-mode discharges

Naito, Osamu; Hosogane, Nobuyuki; Tsuji, Shunji; Ushigusa, Kenkichi; Yoshida, Hidetoshi

The global energy confinement characteristics of neutral beam heated JT-60 discharges are presented. There is a difference in the dependence of the energy confinement time on the plasma current between limiter and divertor discharges. For limiter discharges, the energy confinement increases with plasma current up to 3.2 MA, whereas for divertor discharges this improvement saturates when the safety factor drops below 3, independent of the location of the X-point. The JT-60 L-mode results indicate that the deterioration in energy confinementfor q < 3, which is also found in H-mode regimes of other devices, may be a universal characteristic of divertor discharges. Regarding the scaling with plasma size, it is shown that the global/incremental confinement time increases with plasma minor radius. For sufficiently large plasmas, however, the global/incremental confinement time is no longer a function of minor radius.