Study of density limit in JT-60 joule heated plasmas

Impurities which mingle in tokamak plasmas cause dominant radiation loss in the high density regime and the energy balance of plasma is lost. This gives rise to MHD instability and results in major disruption. Density limit in joule heated plasmas has been studied by using one dimensional transport code combined with MHD instability analysis code. When the diffusion of impurity is taken into account, the numerically obtained density limit diagram or Hugill diagram quantitatively agrees well with that obtained in the experiment. It is also clarified that the corona-equilibrium model overestimates the density limit. (author)