Alcator C-Mod Weekly Highlights
				August 20, 1996

Plasma operation continued on Alcator C-Mod last week. Four run days were
scheduled, but a seal-oil leak in the alternator and replacement of fuses and
SCRs in the TF power supply reduced actual operating time to two and a half
days. Nevertheless, good progress was made, and the tokamak is now ready for
normal operation. 

Reproducible, full length 0.8MA plasmas were produced using the higher
pre-charge and parallel EF4 configuration. Reliable breakdown and startup were
obtained at 6 Tesla, and the toroidal field ramped down to the nominal 5.4T
level for RF heating. Conditioning of the ICRF antennas has begun, with 0.5MW
coupled to the plasma so far. 

The divertor cryopump prototype was cooled down and operated under PLC
control. This new subsytem is now ready for testing during plasma operation. 

The initial boronization of the vessel for this campaign was carried out
Monday night. Approximately 60 Angstroms of Boron (average thickness) was
deposited using ECDC, over a period of about 11 hours.  

TFTR has released their #5 FMIT source and PPPL personnel are now taking it
apart to prepare for shipment of the cavities and associated hardware to MIT.
We expect delivery in early September. These components will be used to
convert our remaining ICRF transmitter to tunable (40-80MHz) operation.  

Dr. Dirk Hartmann of Max-Planck-Institut fur Plasmaphysik is visiting
C-Mod to collaborate on RF experiments from Aug. 13 to Sept. 13.

In Texas, FRC personnel and V. Bertolino (PFC) continued documentation,
disassembly, and packing of remaining DNB components.  All DNB hardware is now
documented and moved into staging areas in expectation that it will be shipped
this week.

Roger Bengtson of the FRC completed a visit to MIT.  The purpose of his
visit was to work with Brian LaBombard to develop an additional Langmuir
probe system for C-Mod and to begin data analysis on probe data.

Dr. Jeff Beckstead of InterScience, Inc. visited C-Mod on August 19th to set
up a future collaboration involving use on C-Mod of hardware developed for
InterScience's  Phase II SBIR project, "Real-time Multiple Source Video
Compression and Storage System".  It is planned that this system, which will
digitize the video images from up  to 4 cameras, will be installed on C-Mod.