Prediction of kinetic profiles of D-T plasma using the TGYRO transport code in the JET DTE2 discharges

JET DTE2 experiments have demonstrated the highest-ever fusion energy production. Prediction of transport in these discharges has been made using the TGLF and NEO models in TGYRO transport code. A new model TGLF-SAT2 [1] of the saturated 3-D fluctuation spectrum fit to a large set of non-linear CGYRO turbulence simulations was developed to address discrepancies uncovered by validation with JET deuterium discharges. The predicted kinetic profiles of D-T plasma using TGYRO have been validated by the JET DTE2 experiment and were found to be an accurate predictor when using the measured boundary values at r/a=0.85. TGYRO predicts the temperature profiles well for a wide radial window, except for a minor discrepancy in T_i in the plasma core. The electron density profiles n_e are underpredicted by 20% at mid-radii for both baseline scenarios and hybrid scenarios.

An integrated modeling workflow TGYRO-STEP that iterates between the core transport with TGYRO, the pedestal pressure predicted with EPED and the MHD equilibrium computed with EFIT to find a self-consistent steady state solution is also reported. Comparing the STEP result with the fixed boundary runs shows how well the integrated modeling can predict the discharge without taking boundary conditions from the data.

This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under DE-SC0019736 and DE-FG02-95ER54309.

[1] G.M. Staebler, et al., Nucl. Fusion 61 (2021) 116007

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