Results from core-edge experiments in high Power, high performance plasmas on DIII-D

•Peaked heat flux dependence on IP and PSOL for DIII-D DNDs consistent with ITPA SNs.•Gas injection can improve τE in highly powered DND plasmas.•“Semi-slot” divertor configuration on DIII-D shows significant heat flux reduction. Significant challenges to reducing divertor heat flux in highly powered near-double null divertor (DND) hybrid plasmas, while still maintaining both high performance metrics and low enough density for application of RF heating, are identified. For these DNDs on DIII-D, the scaling of the peak heat flux at the outer target (q⊥P) ∝ [PSOL x IP] 0.92 for PSOL= 8−19MW and IP= 1.0–1.4MA, and is consistent with standard ITPA scaling for single-null H-mode plasmas. Two divertor heat flux reduction methods were tested. First, applying the puff-and-pump radiating divertor to DIII-D plasmas may be problematical at high power and H98 (≥ 1.5) due to improvement in confinement time with deuterium gas puffing which can lead to unacceptably high core density under certain conditions. Second, q⊥P for these high performance DNDs was reduced by ≈35% when an open divertor is closed on the common flux side of the outer divertor target (“semi-slot”) but also that heating near the slot opening is a significant source for impurity contamination of the core.