This work presents the PORTALS framework (Rodriguez-Fernandez et al 2022 Nucl. Fusion62 076036), which leverages surrogate modeling and optimization techniques to enable the prediction of core plasma profiles and performance with nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations at significantly reduced cost, with no loss of accuracy. The efficiency of PORTALS is benchmarked against standard methods, and its full potential is demonstrated on a unique, simultaneous 5-channel (electron temperature, ion temperature, electron density, impurity density and angular rotation) prediction of steady-state profiles in a DIII-D ITER Similar Shape plasma with GPU-accelerated, nonlinear CGYRO (Candy et al 2016 J. Comput. Phys.324 73–93). This paper also provides general guidelines for accurate performance predictions in burning plasmas and the impact of transport modeling in fusion pilot plants studies.
This paper presents a new framework called PORTALS that uses surrogate modeling and optimization techniques to predict core plasma profiles and performance in fusion reactors at a significantly reduced cost, without losing accuracy. The framework is benchmarked against standard methods and demonstrates its potential by simultaneously predicting 5 key plasma parameters in a DIII-D experiment. The paper provides guidelines for accurate performance predictions in future fusion power plants.