Preparing for ITER plasma operation

M.L. Walker, J.L. Barr, D. Eldon, G. Sips, A. Xing, B. Chapman, V. Graber, E. Schuster, J. Yang

Division of Plasma Physics (DPP) Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society (APS)

Spokane, WA, USA, October 17-21, 2022

We report on progress made in a sequence of experiments at DIII-D addressing key questions and testing operational scenarios in preparation for early ITER operation. These experiments build on one another so their execution is divided roughly equally across the 2022-23 campaigns. The work informs how to best achieve and maintain the desired plasma conditions needed for ITER first plasma and PFPO-1 objectives. One pair of experiments is designed to improve the physics understanding of the evolution of plasma parameters in EC-assisted plasma initiation and the potential for generation of runaway electrons during Ohmic initiation. Another set of experiments is designed to first add capability to the DIII-D PCS to enable emulation of ITER plant control systems and then use this capability to accurately emulate the execution of planned ITER scenarios. The latter work has a particular focus on development and validation of algorithms for handling exceptional events, i.e., those events that require either an asynchronous change of control algorithm/objective or a switch to an alternate scenario and its associated control algorithms designed to mitigate the consequences of the event.

*Work Supported by U.S. DOE. Grants DE-FC02-04ER54698, DE-SC0019003 and DE-SC0010661.