Demonstration of ITER operational scenarios on DIII-D

Abstract

The DIII-D program has recently initiated an effort to provide suitably scaled experimental evaluations of four primary ITER operational scenarios. New and unique features of this work are that the plasmas incorporate essential features of the ITER scenarios and anticipated operating characteristics; e.g., the plasma cross-section, aspect ratio and value of I/aB of the DIII-D discharges match the ITER design, with size reduced by a factor of 3.7. Key aspects of all four scenarios, such as target values for {beta}{sub N} and H{sub 98}, have been replicated successfully on DIII-D, providing an improved and unified physics basis for transport and stability modeling, as well as for performance extrapolation to ITER. In all four scenarios normalized performance equals or closely approaches that required to realize the physics and technology goals of ITER, and projections of the DIII-D discharges are consistent with ITER achieving its goals of {ge} 400 MW of fusion power production and Q {ge} 10. These studies also address many of the key physics issues related to the ITER design, including the L-H transition power threshold, the size of ELMs, pedestal parameter scaling, the impact of tearing modes on confinement and disruptivity, beta limits and the required capabilities of the plasma control system. An example of direct influence on the ITER design from this work is a modification of the specified operating range in internal inductance at 15 MA for the poloidal field coil set, based on observations that the measured inductance in the baseline scenario case lay outside the original ITER specification.