Progress in Developing ITER Operational Scenarios on DIII-D

The DIII-D program has initiated an effort to provide experimental evaluations of four ITER operational scenarios: baseline ELMy H-mode, advanced inductive, hybrid, and steady-state. Discharges in 2008 matched the anticipated ITER design for plasma shape, aspect ratio and value of I/aB, with size reduced by a factor of 3.7, while matching key performance targets for $\beta_N$ and $H_{98y2}$. In 2009, attention has focused on improving the match to anticipated ITER parameters: Baseline scenario plasmas have been operated with reduced densities to match the anticipated ITER edge pedestal collisionality, while maintaining target values for $\beta_N$ and $H_{98y2}$. These plasmas have enabled a demonstration of 2/1 NTM mode suppression at low $q_{95}$ using ECCD, as planned for ITER. Additional experiments are planned to investigate operation of baseline scenario plasmas with low torque input (low rotation), as well as rf-dominated operation. Comparison of experimental profiles to those from transport modeling will be shown.