MHD instabilities and their control in high-beta plasmas in KSTAR

Abstract

We established 3 specific tasks as follows: Task 1 - Investigate the MHD activity during the current ramp-up phase with shaped plasmas; Task 2 - Develop a theoretical model that may show the hollowness dependent instability; Task 3 - Explore the beta-limiting instabilities. To address each task, FAR-TECH actively participated in the 2012 KSTAR run-campaign, which helped us make productive progress. Specifically, the shaping dependence of MHD activity during current ramp-up phase was investigated using dedicated run-time in KSTAR (October 4 and 9, 2012), which was also attempted to address the hollowness of temperature (or pressure) profiles. Also, a performance-limiting disruption, which occurred in a relatively high intermediate beta plasma (shot 7110) in KSTAR ({beta}{sub N} ~ 1.7), was studied, and the preliminary analysis shows that the disruption might not be stability-limited but likely density-limited.