Investigation of ELM [edge localized mode] Dynamics with the Resonant Magnetic Perturbation Effects

Topics covered are: anomalous transport and E x B flow shear effects in the H-mode pedestal; RMP (resonant magnetic perturbation) effects in NSTX discharges; development of a scaling of H-mode pedestal in tokamak plasmas with type I ELMs (edge localized modes); and divertor heat load studies

Electron cyclotron heating and current drive in toroidal geometry

The Principal Investigator has continued to work on problems associated both with the deposition and with the emission of electron cyclotron heating power electron cyclotron heating in toroidal plasmas. Inparticular, the work has focused on the use of electron cyclotron heating to stabilize q = 1 and q = 2 instabilities in tokamaks and on the use of electron cyclotron emission as a plasma diagnostic. The research described in this report has been carried out in collaboration with scientists at Princeton, MIT and Livermore. The Principal Investigator is now employed at Lehigh University, and a small group effort on electron cyclotron heating in plasmas has begun to evolve at Lehigh involving undergraduate and graduate students. Work has also been done in support of the electron cyclotron heating and current drive program at the Center for Research in Plasma Physics in Lausanne, Switzerland

Final Report for National Transport Code Collaboration PTRANSP

PTRANSP, which is the predictive version of the TRANSP code, was developed in a collaborative effort involving the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, General Atomics Corporation, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Lehigh University. The PTRANSP/TRANSP suite of codes is the premier integrated tokamak modeling software in the United States. A production service for PTRANSP/TRANSP simulations is maintained at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory; the server has a simple command line client interface and is subscribed to by about 100 researchers from tokamak projects in the US, Europe, and Asia. This service produced nearly 13000 PTRANSP/TRANSP simulations in the four year period FY 2005 through FY 2008. Major archives of TRANSP results are maintained at PPPL, MIT, General Atomics, and JET. Recent utilization, counting experimental analysis simulations as well as predictive simulations, more than doubled from slightly over 2000 simulations per year in FY 2005 and FY 2006 to over 4300 simulations per year in FY 2007 and FY 2008. PTRANSP predictive simulations applied to ITER increased eight fold from 30 simulations per year in FY 2005 and FY 2006 to 240 simulations per year in FY 2007 and FY 2008, accounting for more than half of combined PTRANSP/TRANSP service CPU resource utilization in FY 2008. PTRANSP studies focused on ITER played a key role in journal articles. Examples of validation studies carried out for momentum transport in PTRANSP simulations were presented at the 2008 IAEA conference. The increase in number of PTRANSP simulations has continued (more than 7000 TRANSP/PTRANSP simulations in 2010) and results of PTRANSP simulations appear in conference proceedings, for example the 2010 IAEA conference, and in peer reviewed papers. PTRANSP provides a bridge to the Fusion Simulation Program (FSP) and to the future of integrated modeling. Through years of widespread usage, each of the many parts of the PTRANSP suite of codes has been thoroughly validated against experimental data and benchmarked against other codes. At the same time, architectural modernizations are improving the modularity of the PTRANSP code base. The NUBEAM neutral beam and fusion products fast ion model, the Plasma State data repository (developed originally in the SWIM SciDAC project and adapted for use in PTRANSP), and other components are already shared with the SWIM, FACETS, and CPES SciDAC FSP prototype projects. Thus, the PTRANSP code is already serving as a bridge between our present integrated modeling capability and future capability. As the Fusion Simulation Program builds toward the facility currently available in the PTRANSP suite of codes, early versions of the FSP core plasma model will need to be benchmarked against the PTRANSP simulations. This will be necessary to build user confidence in FSP, but this benchmarking can only be done if PTRANSP itself is maintained and developed

Electron cyclotron heating and current drive in toroidal geometry

The Principal Investigator has continued to work on problems associated both with the deposition and with the emission of electron cyclotron power in toroidal plasmas. We have investigated the use of electron cyclotron resonance heating for bringing compact tokamaks (BPX) to ignition-like parameters. This requires that we continue to refine the modeling capability of the TORCH code linked with the BALDUR 1 {1/2} D transport code. Using this computational tool, we have examined the dependence of ignition on heating and transport employing both theoretical (multi-mode) and empirically based transport models. The work on current drive focused on the suppression of tearing modes near the q = 2 surface and sawteeth near the q = 1 surface. Electron cyclotron current drive in CIT near the q =2 surface was evaluated for a launch scenario where electron cyclotron power was launched near the equatorial plane. The work on suppression of sawteeth has been oriented toward understanding the suppression that has been observed in a number of tokamaks, in particular, in the WT-3 tokamak in Kyoto. To evaluate the changes in current profile (shear) near the q =1 surface, simulations have been carried out using the linked BALDUR-TORCH code. We consider effects on shear resulting both from wave-induced current as well as from changes in conductivity associated with changes in local temperature. Abstracts and a paper relating to this work is included in Appendix A

Final Report for National Transport Code Collaboration PTRANSP

PTRANSP, which is the predictive version of the TRANSP code, was developed in a collaborative effort involving the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, General Atomics Corporation, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Lehigh University. The PTRANSP/TRANSP suite of codes is the premier integrated tokamak modeling software in the United States. A production service for PTRANSP/TRANSP simulations is maintained at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory; the server has a simple command line client interface and is subscribed to by about 100 researchers from tokamak projects in the US, Europe, and Asia. This service produced nearly 13000 PTRANSP/TRANSP simulations in the four year period FY 2005 through FY 2008. Major archives of TRANSP results are maintained at PPPL, MIT, General Atomics, and JET. Recent utilization, counting experimental analysis simulations as well as predictive simulations, more than doubled from slightly over 2000 simulations per year in FY 2005 and FY 2006 to over 4300 simulations per year in FY 2007 and FY 2008. PTRANSP predictive simulations applied to ITER increased eight fold from 30 simulations per year in FY 2005 and FY 2006 to 240 simulations per year in FY 2007 and FY 2008, accounting for more than half of combined PTRANSP/TRANSP service CPU resource utilization in FY 2008. PTRANSP studies focused on ITER played a key role in journal articles. Examples of validation studies carried out for momentum transport in PTRANSP simulations were presented at the 2008 IAEA conference. The increase in number of PTRANSP simulations has continued (more than 7000 TRANSP/PTRANSP simulations in 2010) and results of PTRANSP simulations appear in conference proceedings, for example the 2010 IAEA conference, and in peer reviewed papers. PTRANSP provides a bridge to the Fusion Simulation Program (FSP) and to the future of integrated modeling. Through years of widespread usage, each of the many parts of the PTRANSP suite of codes has been thoroughly validated against experimental data and benchmarked against other codes. At the same time, architectural modernizations are improving the modularity of the PTRANSP code base. The NUBEAM neutral beam and fusion products fast ion model, the Plasma State data repository (developed originally in the SWIM SciDAC project and adapted for use in PTRANSP), and other components are already shared with the SWIM, FACETS, and CPES SciDAC FSP prototype projects. Thus, the PTRANSP code is already serving as a bridge between our present integrated modeling capability and future capability. As the Fusion Simulation Program builds toward the facility currently available in the PTRANSP suite of codes, early versions of the FSP core plasma model will need to be benchmarked against the PTRANSP simulations. This will be necessary to build user confidence in FSP, but this benchmarking can only be done if PTRANSP itself is maintained and developed

Investigation of ELM [edge localized mode] Dynamics with the Resonant Magnetic Perturbation Effects

Topics covered are: anomalous transport and E x B flow shear effects in the H-mode pedestal; RMP (resonant magnetic perturbation) effects in NSTX discharges; development of a scaling of H-mode pedestal in tokamak plasmas with type I ELMs (edge localized modes); and divertor heat load studies