Plasma physics found in JT-60 tokamak over the last 20 years

Kikuchi, Mitsuru; JT-60 Team

JT-60 is a large tokamak to achieve equivalent break-even condition, started its operation in April 1985 and completed its operation in August 2008. JT-60 achieved world record ion temperature Ti of 45keV as recorded in Guiness Book in 1996 and record electron temperature Te of 20 keV. It also achieved world record of equivalent energy gain Q = 1.25. In parallel with research to achieve missions of JT-60, concept development to overcome pulsed nature of tokamak system has been made, so-called Steady-State Tokamak Reactor (SSTR) based on the maximum utilization of the bootstrap current. This concept development led to dramatic change in research direction from low q and high regime to high q and high regime, sometimes called advanced tokamak research. This talk addresses physics of the steady-state tokamak disclosed mainly in JT-60.