Characteristics of the first H-mode discharges in KSTAR

Yoon, S. W.*; Ahn, J.-W.*; Jeon, Y. M.*; Suzuki, Takahiro; Hahn, S. H.*; Ko, W. H.*; Lee, K. D.*; Chung, J. I.*; Nam, Y. U.*; Kim, J.*; et al.

Nuclear Fusion, 51(11), p.113009_1 - 113009_9, 2011/11

https://doi.org/10.1088/0029-5515/51/11/113009

Typical ELMy H-mode discharges have been achieved on the KSTAR tokamak with the combined auxiliary heating of NBI and ECRH. The minimum external heating power required is about 1.1 MW at a line-averaged density higher than 1.410 m and a toroidal field of 2 T. There is a clear indication of the increase of the L-H threshold power at densities lower than . The initial analysis of energy confinement time () predicted that was higher than the prediction of multi-machine scaling laws by a factor 1.4-1.6. However, when the contribution of fast ion confinement to the total energy was taken into account, better agreed with the scaling results. A clear increase of electron and ion temperature in the pedestal was observed in the H-mode phase but the core ion temperature did not change significantly. On the other hand, the toroidal rotation also increased over all radii in the H-mode phase. The measured ELM frequency was from 30-50 Hz and the drop of total energy appeared to be less than 5%. Between large ELM spikes, small/grassy ELMs were also identified when mixed heating of NBI and ECRH was applied.