Recent experiments on EAST have achieved the first long pulse H-mode (61 s) with zero loop voltage and an ITER-like tungsten divertor, and have demonstrated access to broad plasma current profiles by increasing the density in fully-noninductive lower hybrid current-driven discharges. These long pulse discharges reach wall thermal and particle balance, exhibit stationary good confinement (H 98y2 ~ 1.1) with low core electron transport, and are only possible with optimal active cooling of the tungsten armors. In separate experiments, the electron density was systematically varied in order to study its effect on the deposition profile of the external lower hybrid current drive (LHCD), while keeping the plasma in fully-noninductive conditions and with divertor strike points on the tungsten divertor. A broadening of the current profile is found, as indicated by lower values of the internal inductance at higher density. A broad current profile is attractive because, among other reasons, it enables internal transport barriers at large minor radius, leading to improved confinement as shown in companion DIII-D experiments. These experiments strengthen the physics basis for achieving high performance, steady state discharges in future burning plasmas.

Two issues of the resistive wall mode (RWM) control code maturity are addressed: the inclusion of advanced mode damping physics beyond the ideal MHD description, and the possibility of taking into account the influence of 3D features of the conducting structures on the mode stability and control. Examples of formulations and computational results are given, using the MARS-F/K codes and the CarMa code. The MARS-K calculations for a DIII-D plasma shows that the fast ion contributions, which can give additional drift kinetic stabilization in the perturbative approach, also drive an extra unstable branch of mode in the self-consistent kinetic modelling. The CarMa modelling for the ITER steady state advanced plasmas shows about 20% reduction in the RWM growth rate by the volumetric blanket modules. The multi-mode analysis predicts a weak interaction between the n = 0 and the n = 1 RWMs, due to the 3D ITER walls. The CarMa code is also successfully applied to model the realistic feedback experiments in RFX.

Key plasma physics and real-time control elements needed for robustly stable operation of high fusion power discharges in ITER have been demonstrated in US fusion research. Optimization of the current density profile has enabled passively stable operation without n " 1 tearing modes in discharges simulating ITER's baseline scenario with zero external torque. Stable rampdown of the discharge has been achieved with ITER-like scaled current ramp rates, while maintaining an X-point configuration. Significant advances have been made toward real-time prediction of disruptions: machine learning techniques for prediction of disruptions have achieved 90% accuracy in offline analysis, and direct probing of ideal and resistive plasma stability using 3D magnetic perturbations has shown a rising plasma response before the onset of a tearing mode. Active stability control contributes to prevention of disruptions, including direct stabilization of resistive-wall kink modes in high-β discharges, forced rotation of magnetic islands to prevent wall locking, and localized heating/current drive to shrink the islands. These elements are being integrated into stable operating scenarios and a new event-handling system for off-normal events in order to develop the physics basis and techniques for robust control in ITER.

DIII-D experiments show that the resistive wall mode (RWM) can remain stable in high β scenarios despite a low net torque from nearly balanced neutral beam injection heating. The minimization of magnetic field asymmetries is essential for operation at the resulting low plasma rotation of less than 20 krad s −1 (measured with charge exchange recombination spectroscopy using C VI emission) corresponding to less than 1% of the Alfvén velocity or less than 10% of the ion thermal velocity. In the presence of n = 1 field asymmetries the rotation required for stability is significantly higher and depends on the torque input and momentum confinement, which suggests that a loss of torquebalance can lead to an effective rotation threshold above the linear RWM stability threshold. Without an externally applied field the measured rotation can be too low to neglect the diamagnetic rotation. A comparison of the instability onset in plasmas rotating with and against the direction of the plasma current indicates the importance of the toroidal flow driven by the radial electric field in the stabilization process. Observed rotation thresholds are compared with predictions for the semi-kinetic damping model, which generally underestimates the rotation required for stability. A more detailed modeling of kinetic damping including diamagnetic and precession drift frequencies can lead to stability without plasma rotation. However, even with corrected error fields and fast plasma rotation, plasma generated perturbations, such as edge localized modes, can nonlinearly destabilize the RWM. In these cases feedback

External n  =  1 magnetic fields are applied in RFX-mod and DIII-D low safety factor Tokamak plasmas to investigate their interaction with the internal MHD dynamics and in particular with the sawtooth instability. In these experiments the applied magnetic fields cause a reduction of both the sawtooth amplitude and period, leading to an overall stabilizing effect on the oscillations. In RFX-mod sawteeth eventually disappear and are replaced by a stationary m  =  1, n  =  1 helical equilibrium without an increase in disruptivity. However toroidal rotation is significantly reduced in these plasmas, thus it is likely that the sawtooth mitigation in these experiments is due to the combination of the helically deformed core and the reduced rotation. The former effect is qualitatively well reproduced by nonlinear MHD simulations performed with the PIXIE3D code. The results obtained in these RFX-mod experiments motivated similar ones in DIII-D L-mode diverted Tokamak plasmas at low q 95. These experiments succeeded in reproducing the sawtooth mitigation with the approach developed in RFX-mod. In DIII-D this effect is correlated with a clear increase of the n  =  1 plasma response, that indicates an enhancement of the coupling to the marginally stable n  =  1 external kink, as simulations with the linear MHD code IPEC suggest. A significant rotation braking in the plasma core is also observed in DIII-D. Numerical calculations of the neoclassical toroidal viscosity (NTV) carried out with PENT identify this torque as a possible contributor for this effect.