Report of the 3rd European Fusion Physics Workshop

The 3rd EFPW was convened in December 1995 at Segovia, with the support of Eurotom and CIEMAT. The established pattern for these meetings was followed, beginning with a range of topical themes of interest to the magnetic confinement fusion research community. Subsequent presentations moved on to summarize progress in experiments on JET and the design activity for ITER. The topical themes this year comprised tokamak operational limits, disruption phenomena and transport issues (including the role of plasma edge effects, dimensionless scaling analysers and 'non-local' dependences). Also discussed were tokamak concept improvements, with additional contributions emphasizing the synergistic role of stellarators. JET highlights reported were the achievements of the experiments with the MkI divertor, high fusion performance plasmas, and exploratory work on discharge optimization techniques (such as reversed magnetic shear). This article summarizes the proceedings of the workshop on the topical themes and the JET results, including a number of points raised in the associated discussion sessions.