Borderline: developing an integrated core-edge modelling capacity for fusion relevant scenarios

Research Project, 2021 – 2024

A positive energy balance in a magnetic fusion devices require heating a deuterium and tritium mix to around 100 million degrees while, at the same time, maintaining the plasma pressure in the magnetic confinement for sufficiently long time to allow the particles to fuse. Understanding and controlling the processes and instabilities that limit performance in a fusion energy grade plasma is therefore key. The energy confinement in the core is helped by the spontaneous transition to a high confinement state where a transport barrier is built up and a pedestal in pressure (density and temperature) is formed.Although, favorable for confinement, the increased pressure and gradients in the region tend to lead to instabilities that in a cyclic pattern expel energy and then slowly recovers. We aim to provide models for predicting the pedestal in the context of Integrated modelling of ITER and DEMO scenarios and to validate these models on existing devices. The project will develop through a sequence of tasks/target outcomes and will in parallel provide improved understanding, encoded in fast models through ML techniques and an increased predictive modelling capability by introduction of these models in the EUROfusion transport Simulator (ETS). From the framework integration point of view, the end goal in terms of integration is to have a full fledged core-edge coupled simulation capacity where the models developed here will sit at the border between the core model and the edge.