A study on the NB heating and current drive in fusion plasmas

Final destination of the project is to establish the research basis of heating and current drive for large tokamak, such as KSTAR, or next generation fusion reactor through the neutral beam injection (NBI). On the 1st-stage to achieve the objectives: 1) Required capability of an ion source(with an output power of 2 MW neutral beam, a beam energy of 100 keV) which is a main component of KSTAR NBI-1 system was proven by the design, manufacturing, and performance test during the past three years. 2) Until the development of new ion source, the NB heating experiments were performed to achieve the NB heating of KSTAR plasma with more than 1.0 MW for the 2nd-year and more than 1.5 MW for the 3rd-year by using a prototype ion source upgraded for the 1st-year. From these experiments, the heating power above the H-mode threshold was supplied to the H-mode operation of KSTAR plasma and contributed to the NB diagnostics, such as CES and MSE, by using the NB. Finally, the basis of NB heating and current drive for the KSTAR was prepared by the 1st-stage research