Alcator C-Mod Weekly Highlights
                 March 5, 2007
				

FY2007 weeks of research operations:
    tentative target: 15 weeks
    Completed: 0 weeks


Operations
----------

Following a successful leak check on Monday,vessel heater and liquid
nitrogen systems were brought back on-line.  By Thursday C-Mod was
baking at 120C, electron cyclotron discharge cleaning was in
operation, and the magnets were being held at -25C by the CRYO system.
On Saturday an up-to-argon was required to fix issues with two shutter
systems.  C-Mod is now back under bake which is expected to last
approximately one week.

Inspections and maintenance of power supply bus connections in the
power room have been completed.  Connections were disassembled and
re-plated as required.  The magnet power supplies and commutation
switch control system have been powered up and are operational without
faults.


Lower Hybrid System
-------------------

Worked continued on phase and amplitude calibrations in preparation
for the next run period. All the new water loads have been tested
successfully to approximately 250 kW for 0.4 s.  Design and
programming of the FPGA (field programmable gate array) for the
upgrade to the Coupler Protection System continued.


ICRF Systems
------------

Installation of transmission line components in the cell continued
last week as did installation of the fast ferrite tuner control
system.  Testing of rf crowbars, the rf monitor data system, general
data acquisition, and control system continued.


Diagnostics
-----------

We continued to bring diagnostics back on-line.  The two color
interferometer (TCI) alignment through the machine was begun, and the
lasers were brought back into operation.  The new video control system
has been moved into the cell.  Conditioning of the the long pulse DNB
continued.


Travel and Visits
-----------------

David Mikkelsen, PPPL, was at MIT last week discussing rotation
observations with John Rice, and selecting a subset for more intense
examination. Progress was also made with Alex Parisot toward producing
a TRANSP run for a canonical LHCD discharge to be used as the basis of
gyrokinetic turbulence simulations.

Amanda Hubbard travelled to PPPL to participate in a joint experiment
on NSTX.  This ITPA-sponsored experiment, PEP-16, is designed to
compare small ELM regimes between NSTX, Alcator C-MOD, and MAST.
Hendrik Meyer (UKAEA) and Rajesh Maingi (ORNL) also participated. An
excellent match to the C-MOD shape, which MAST can also match, was
obtained in the target q95~5.5 range. H-mode access at the target
kappa ~ 1.7 was elusive, however, and near term analysis will focus on
the possible causes.

Martin Greenwald and Jeff Freidberg attended last week's FESAC meeting
in Gaithersburg, Maryland. They both participated as members of the
committee. Earl Marmar and Miklos Porkolab also attended. While in
Gaithersburg, Earl Marmar also participated in discussions with OFES
and leaders of the other major facilities concerning possible US
responses to needs for the ITER design review process.

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