Impact of hydrogen fuelling on confinement properties in radiative improved mode

The radiative improved (RI) mode at TEXTOR is a high confinement regime, which is obtained by the seeding of neon into deuterium plasmas. Recent experiments were aimed to study the influence of external gas fuelling on the confinement properties of the RI mode. In particular, it was found that a hydrogen puff into such plasmas leads to lower confinement compared with the discharges fuelled with the same amount of deuterium gas. This paper attempts to explain the reduction of confinement in RI plasmas with an external hydrogen puff and its relation to the level of impurity concentration, which is a critical parameter for RI mode confinement.