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Fusion plasmas contain impurities, either intrinsic originating from the wall, or injected willfully with the aim of reducing power loads on machine components by converting heat flux into radiation. The understanding and the prediction of the effects of these impurities and their radiation on plasma performances is crucial in order to retain good confinement. In addition, it is important to understand the impact of pellet injection on plasma performance since this technique allows higher core densities which are required to maximise the fusion power. This thesis contributes to these efforts through both experimental investigations and modelling. Experiments were conducted at ASDEX Upgrade which has a full-W wall. Impurity seeding was applied to H-modes by injecting nitrogen and also medium-Z impurities such as Kr and Ar to assess the impact of both edge and central radiation on confinement. A database of about 25 discharges has been collected and analysed. A wide range of plasma parameters was achieved up to ITER relevant values such as high Greenwald and high radiation fractions. Transport analyses taking into account the radiation distribution reveal that edge localised radiation losses do not significantly impact confinement as long as the H-mode pedestal is sustained. N seeding induces higher pedestal pressure which is propagated to the core via profile stiffness. Central radiation must be limited and controlled to avoid confinement degradation. This requires reliable control of the impurity concentration but also possibilities to act on the ELM frequency which must be kept high enough to avoid an irreversible impurity accumulation in the centre and the consequent radiation collapse. The key role of the ELM frequency is confirmed also by the analysis of N+He discharges.\nNon-coronal effects affect the radiation of low-Z impurities at the plasma edge. Due to the radial transport, the steep temperature gradients and the ELM flush out, a local equilibrium cannot be establish an the radiation increases in this region. To account for these effects, an empirical non-coronal model was developed which takes the impurity residence time at the pedestal into account. The validity of this assumption was verified by modelling the evolution of the impurities and radiation for ASDEX Upgrade H-modes with nitrogen seeding by coupling the ASTRA transport code with STRAHL. The time-dependent simulations include impurity radiation due to nitrogen and tungsten and the transport effects induced at the edge by the ELMs. The modelling results have been validated against the experimental data. The modelled radiation profiles show a very good agreement with the measured ones over both radius and time. In particular, the strong enhancement of the nitrogen radiation caused by non-coronal effects through the ELM-induced transport is well reproduced. The radiation properties of tungsten are very weakly influenced by non-coronal effects due to the faster equilibration. W radiation, which is highly dependent on the Elm frequency, strongly increases when this is decreased, due to the lack of sufficiently strong flush out of this impurity. This is in agreement with the experimental observations and indicates that maintaining high ELM frequency is essential for the stability and performance of the discharges. Analyses of the high density scenario with pellets indicate that several processes take place when pellets are injected into the plasma. In particular, due to their cooling effect, the temperature drops as soon as pellets are injected. This is compensated by an increase in density. These processes occur mainly at the edge and are propagated to the core via stiffness. This explains why the confinement stays approximately constant during the whole discharge. Both experiments and transport calculations reveal that the energy confinement time is independent of the density indicating that the currently used scaling is not valid in this regime. The results of this thesis will contribute towards an extension of the confinement scaling which is currently being undertaken.