Alcator C-MOD Weekly Highlights
		      April 8, 1997



	Alcator C-Mod is now undergoing final invessel inspections,
cleanup, and documentation in preparation for pumpdown.   An enormous amount
of work had to be done over the last week to complete invessel work.  Fiber
runs for several new diagnostics were installed. The cable run,
vacuum feedthroughs, and invessel shielding for the new RF wall probes
were completed.  Many calibrations including neutron, h-alpha, and visible
bremsstrahlung, and alignments including tangential interferometer, bolometer,
core and X-point Thomson scattering, and fiber view registrations were
completed.  In addition, several periscopes, the omegatron ion energy
analyzer, fast scanning probe, RF probes, impurity injector, tangential
and perpendicular charge exchange, 2PI bolometer, visible bremsstrahlung,
and boronization, NINJA, and torus gas systems were installed.  Magnetics,
x-ray tomography, fast thermocouple, divertor probes, and MHD coils,
among other diagnostics, were connected and tested for proper operation.
TORVAC, our vessel pumping station was brought back into operation as was the
RGA and trending of vacuum data to our data system. Activities
not directly related to pumpdown included completion of the igloo, installation
of heater and thermocouple systems, the addition of new cable trays for the
vacuum system and diagnostics, and work on diagnostic stand expansion to give
more room for new diagnostics.  The vaporizer has been started to purge the
cryostat and coils with dry nitrogen gas.  This process will be  continued for
several days to remove all water vapor from the cryostat and magnet cooling
channels and is required before any liquid nitrogen can be used for cooling.
	Work on the new transmitters and power systems continued this
week.  High voltage switchgear for both transmitters #3 and #4 have been
tested and operated remotely.  All overload interlocks and low voltage power
supplies have been tested.   Coax runs from the new phaseshifters to the cell
have been completed.  Gate and fault logic for the EFC magnet supply have been
checked.  All contactors for our TMX power supplies have been removed and
are being reconditioned.  Preparations are being made for delivery and
installation of our new EF4 reactors.  One important step toward
machine operation begun this week was starting the commissioning of the
alternator.
	Installation of DNB power supplies continued.  Work proceeded on the
design of the controls for the new ACCEL supply and associated crowbar
circuit.  Filtering and degassing of the oil for the ACCEL supply and for
the arc/filament/snubber supply will continue into next week.  
	A spectrometer and associated data acquisition equipment were
prepared for shipping at the University of Texas.  This spectrometer will be
used to look at background spectra in the regions of interest of the new
DNB diagnostics.
	Joe Bartolick, Boris Grek, and Dave Johnson from PPPL visited last
week to begin re-installation of the X-point Thomson scattering system.
Ben Welch and Jim Weaver are here from the University of Maryland doing
calibrations and alignments on their optical systems.  Mark May and Vlad
Soukhanovskii were here from JHU completing installation of their
divertor spectrometer.  Marco Brambilla from the Max-Plank Institute for
Plasma Physics (IPP) in Garching visited with Paul Bonoli last
week and worked on applying his toroidal ICRF code, TORIC, to simulate D(3^He)
minority heating and D(3^He) mode conversion electron heating experiments
in C-Mod.
	Yuichi Takase, Paul Bonoli, Chris Rost, Peter O'Shea, and
Steve Wukitch attended the 12th Topical Conference of Radio Frequency Power
in Plasmas in Savannah, GA.