40 years of JET operations: a unique contribution to fusion science
The end of tokamak operations at the Joint European Torus in December 2023 brought to a close the experimental life of an extraordinary fusion research facility.
The JET design activities, starting in 1973, had the ambition of building a device capable of studying plasmas in conditions and dimensions approaching those of a reactor. This aim was articulated into four main areas of study: plasma-wall interaction, plasma heating, behaviour as as parameters approach the reactor range and the study of alpha particles. The latter was the most groundbreaking, requiring the tokamak to operate with D-T mixture plasmas.
The paper will review the remarkable contributions of JET in various fields of tokamak science, including the D-T experiments, and their impact on the fusion research progress.