  We investigate the drift wave -- zonal flow dynamics in a shearless slab
geometry with the new flux-balanced Hasegawa-Wakatani model. As in previous
Hasegawa-Wakatani models, we observe a sharp transition from a turbulence
dominated regime to a zonal jet dominated regime as we decrease the plasma
resistivity. However, unlike previous models, zonal structures are always
present in the flux-balanced model, even for high resistivity, and strongly
reduce the level of particle and vorticity flux. The more robust zonal jets
also have a higher variability than in previous models, which is further
enhanced when the computational domain is chosen to be elongated in the radial
direction. In these cases, we observe complex multi-scale dynamics, with
multiple jets interacting with one another, and intermittent bursts. We present
a detailed statistical analysis which highlights how the changes in the aspect
ratio of the computational domain affect the third-order statistical moments,
and thus modify the turbulent dynamics.
