Speaker
Description
The Joint European Torus (JET) completed its extraordinary
experimental lifetime in December 2023. JET had the unique
capability to operate with tritium and exploited this to complete
deuterium-tritium (D-T) experiments in both 2021 and 2023.
These experimental campaigns, known as DTE2 and DTE3, broke
the world record fusion energy record, achieving 59MJ and 69MJ
respectively. Further to the record, a large experimental
programme in D-T provided a wealth of data in both physics and
technology.
High input power to the tokamak plasma was required to reach the
plasma temperatures relevant for D-T fusion reactions. The
majority of this power was provided by the Neutral Beam Injection
(NBI) system. NBI is a flexible auxiliary heating method for
tokamak plasmas, capable of being efficiently coupled to the
various plasma configurations. NBI was first used on JET in 1986
and is composed of 16 ion sources on two separate beamlines.
Following a series of upgrades to the ion sources and beamlines it
was possible to achieve >32MW of power to the plasma in either
deuterium or tritium.
The development and operational experience of increasing the
power delivered by the JET NBI ion sources to the level required
to achieve this fusion record across the 2021 and 2023 JET D-T
experiments are explored in this contribution.
