Physics and goals of RTO/RC-ITER

The ITER design activities are now focused on the development of a design for a tokamak burning plasma experiment which will achieve Q = 10 in long-pulse, inductively driven plasmas and which aims to demonstrate steady-state operation at Q = 5 using non-inductive current drive. The device is designed to allow operational flexibility in plasma equilibrium and operating scenarios, and it is intended that the possibility of ignited operation under favourable plasma scenarios should not be excluded. A final design and parameter set has not yet been selected, but considerable progress has been made in developing a series of candidate designs which allow the critical physics and engineering issues to be explored. Here the physics underlying the design options and performance projections, as well as the physics issues to be addressed in the proposed experiment, are analysed.