Differences Between JET and ITER When Producing Fast Ions With ICRH

Fusion power has the potential to replace fossil fuel-based energy sources, but the technology is in need of further development. The plasma in a fusion tokamak must be heated to above 100 million C, requiring effective heating methods. One such method is ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH), which uses RF waves to heat the plasma. The main objective of this work is to compare fast ion distributions generated in the tokamaks JET and ITER using ICRH. To model the wave fields and fast ion distributions, the FEMIC-Foppler code is used. By adding a minority of helium-3 to the plasma, the effects of ICRH are improved. Due to the larger volume of ITER, it requires a stronger input power to achieve a similar fast ion distribution as in JET. During the project, an analytical model is derived that describes the required input power to achieve similar normalized fast ion energies in both tokamaks. The analytical model values are improved upon experimentally using a parameter sweep of the input power, until the same normalized fast ion energies are achieved. Differences in the primary heating location cannot be resolved by varying the input power, but having different minority concentrations in the tokamaks could. A good match is found when the helium-3 concentration in ITER is twice as large as in JET.