Abstract. This paper reviews Physics R&D results obtained since the publication of the ITER Physics Basis document. The heating power required for the LH transition has been re-assessed, including recent results from C-Mod and JT-60U and it has been found that the predicted power is a factor of two lower than the previous projection. For predicting ITER-FEAT performance, a conservative scaling IPB98(y,2) has been adopted for the energy confinement, producing confinement times 20% lower than those derived from the IPB98(y,1) law. While energy confinement degradation at high density remains a serious issue, recent experiments suggest that good confinement is achievable in ITER at n/nG 0.85 with high triangularity. The estimated runaway electron energy has been reduced to 20MJ, since recent experiments show that runaway electrons disappear for q95leq2.
IAEA 2001