Reply to the comments on "Simulation of large magnetic islands: A possible mechanism for a major tokamak disruption"

Authors:

Abstract
We maintain that there was no qualitative error made in our calculations. As originally reported in our Letter [Phys. Rev. Lett. 39, 1618 (1977)], the width at which exponential growth ceases and algebraic growth starts depends on the values of S. As S decreases, the transition from exponential to algebraic growth occurs at a larger island width. The coarse grid gave the right qualitative result, but gave a small error in the critical value of S for which the growth is always exponential. Since the comparison with experiment was made using large-S results and algebraic growth, this error has no effect on the conclusions of our orginal Letter.