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The B2‐Eirene code package was developed to give better insight into the physics in the scrape‐off layer (SOL), which is defined as the region of open field‐lines intersecting walls. The SOL is characterised by the competition of parallel and perpendicular transport defining by this a 2D system. The description of the plasma‐wall interaction due to the existence of walls and atomic processes are necessary ingredients for an understanding of the scrape‐off layer. This paper concentrates on understanding the basic physics by combining the results of the code with experiments and analytical models or estimates. This work will mainly focus on divertor tokamaks, but most of the arguments and principles can be easily adapted also to other concepts like island divertors in stellarators or limiter devices. The paper presents the basic equations for the plasma transport and the basic models for the neutral transport. This defines the basic ingredients for the SOLPS (Scrape‐Off Layer Plasma Simulator) code package. A first level of understanding is approached for pure hydrogenic plasmas based both on simple models and simulations with B2‐Eirene neglecting drifts and currents. The influence of neutral transport on the different operation regimes is here the main topic. This will finish with time‐dependent phenomena for the pure plasma, so‐called Edge Localised Modes (ELMs). Then, the influence of impurities on the SOL plasma is discussed. For the understanding of impurity physics in the SOL one needs a rather complex combination of different aspects. The impurity production process has to be understood, then the effects of impurities in terms of radiation losses have to be included and finally impurity transport is necessary. This will be introduced with rising complexity starting with simple estimates, analysing then the detailed parallel force balance and the flow pattern of impurities. Using this, impurity compression and radiation instabilities will be studied. This part ends, combining all the elements introduced before, with specific, detailed results from different machines. Then, the effect of drifts and currents is introduced and their consequences presented. Finally, some work on deriving scaling laws for the anomalous turbulent transport based on automatic edge transport code fitting procedures will be described. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

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A complete system of transport equations with all the important perpendicular currents is derived for the simulation of tokamak edge plasma. These transport equations are implemented in the B2.5 code and solved for the parameters of the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak. The relative roles of different mechanisms of transverse conductivity in the formation of the potential profile are studied. It is demonstrated that a reasonable potential distribution in the tokamak edge plasma can be obtained without an ad hoc assumption of the existence of the anomalous perpendicular conductivity. The role of E × B drifts in the redistribution of edge plasma and closing of the currents in the plasma is analysed.

A new B2SOLPS5.2 transport code has been developed and implemented for the simulation of H-mode shots. A new equation system is proposed, which is equivalent to the system which was used in B2SOLPS5.0 previously. The main idea is to replace the major part of the large radial ∇B driven convective fluxes by poloidal fluxes with the same divergence both in the particle balance and in the energy balance equations. This is of special importance for the H-mode where the diffusion coefficient is strongly reduced inside the barrier and large radial convective flows are strongly undesirable from the numerical point of view. The H-mode shots of ASDEX-Upgrade and MAST have been simulated with the new version with reasonable time steps and convergence. It is demonstrated that the radial electric field inside the edge transport barrier and in the pedestal region is close to the neoclassical electric field as in previous simulations of Ohmic shots. The toroidal rotation is co-current directed as in L-mode but is significantly larger in absolute value. It is shown that the shear of the poloidal drift at the inner side of the barrier is close to the value of the shear before the transition, while inside the barrier the value of the shear is significantly bigger. This fact determines self-consistently the width of the edge transport barrier. It is demonstrated that to match the experimental density and temperature radial profiles the drop in the diffusion coefficient within the barrier needs to be significantly larger than the drop in the electron heat conductivity coefficient. For the H-mode the pedestal region usually corresponds to the collisionless regime, so several corrections were introduced into the transport coefficients to extend the applicability of the code to the plateau and banana regimes in the inner regions of the simulation domain.