Pedestal stability comparison and ITER pedestal prediction

Snyder, P. B.*; Aiba, Nobuyuki; Beurskens, M.*; Groebner, R. J.*; Horton, L. D.*; Hubbard, A. E.*; Hughes, J. W.*; Huysmans, G. T. A.*; Kamada, Yutaka; Kirk, A.*; Konz, C.*; Leonard, A. W.*; Lnnroth, J.*; Maggi, C. F.*; Maingi, R.*; Osborne, T. H.*; Oyama, Naoyuki; Pankin, A. Y.*; Saarelma, S.*; Saibene, G.*; Terry, J.*; Urano, Hajime; Wilson, H. R.*

The pressure at the top of the edge transport barrier impacts fusion performance, while large ELMs can constrain material lifetimes. Investigation of intermediate wavelength MHD mode has led to improved understanding of the pedestal height and the mechanism for ELMs. The combination of high resolution diagnostics and a suite of stability codes has made edge stability analysis routine, and contribute both to understanding, and to experimental planning and performance optimization. Here we present extensive comparisons of observations to predicted edge stability boundaries on several tokamaks, both for the standard (Type I) ELM regime, and for small ELM and ELM-free regimes. We further discuss a new predictive model for the pedestal height and width (EPED1), developed by self-consistently combining a simple width model with peeling-ballooning stability calculations. This model is tested against experimental measurements, and used in initial predictions of the pedestal height for ITER.