Electron cyclotron heating assisted startup in JT-60U

Kajiwara, Ken*; Ikeda, Yoshitaka; Seki, Masami; Moriyama, Shinichi; Oikawa, Toshihiro; Fujii, Tsuneyuki; JT-60 Team

Nuclear Fusion, 45(7), p.694 - 705, 2005/07

https://doi.org/10.1088/0029-5515/45/7/019

Electron cyclotron heating (ECH) assisted start-up experiment was performed in JT-60U. The breakdown loop voltage, becoming the maximum value at the plasma start-up, successfully reduced from 30 V to 4 V (E = 0.26 V/m) by 200 kW ECH. This fulfills the value less than 0.3 V/m, which corresponds to the maximum electric field required in ITER. Moreover, in order to investigate properties of start-up plasmas, parameter scans of the ECH power, prefilled gas pressure, resonant position, polarization angle and injection position were carried out and the dependence on them were obtained. It was revealed that the properties have dependences on the injection position and polarization angle in large tokamaks although they seemed to have no dependence on them from the experiments in small and medium tokamaks. In addition, in experiments of the plasma start-up using second and third harmonic ECH, it was found that the plasma current was ramped by 800 kW second harmonic ECH and was not ramped by 1.6 MW third harmonic ECH even with 7 MW neutral beam injection heating.