OBSERVATION OF ALPHA PARTICLES IN DT- AND T-PLASMAS ON JET

OBSERVATION OF ALPHA PARTICLES IN DT- AND T-PLASMAS ON JET

OBSERVATION OF ALPHA PARTICLES IN DT- AND T-PLASMAS ON JET 150 150 UKAEA Opendata

The fusion reaction between deuterium and tritium, D(T,n)4He is the main source of energy in future thermonuclear reactors. Charged fusion products of this reaction, α-particles (4He-ions), are born with an average energy of 3.5 MeV. Transferring energy to the thermal plasma during their slowing down, they should provide the self-sustained DT-plasma burn. Adequate confinement of α-particles is essential to provide efficient heating of the bulk plasma and steady burning of a reactor plasma. That is why the fusion-born α-particle studies have been a priority task for the second DT-experiments (DTE2) on Joint European Tokamak (JET) to understand the main mechanisms of their slowing down, redistribution and losses and to develop optimal plasma scenarios. JET with the ITER-like wall (beryllium wall and tungsten divertor) and enhanced auxiliary heating systems produced significant population of α-particles and provided great opportunity to study the α-particle behaviour giving a stepladder approach for modelling and extrapolating to ITER. Several new results of α-particle studies in DTE2 will be presented in this paper.

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29th IAEA Fusion Energy Conference (FEC 2023), London, 16-21 October 2023