Alcator C-Mod Weekly Highlights
			May 12, 2008

FY2008 weeks of research operations:
     Target: 15 weeks
     Completed:  13.9 weeks

Operations
----------

Last week was a planned maintenance week at Alcator C-Mod. No plasma
operations were scheduled. Plasma research operations are planned to continue
this week.

Note: The total number of weeks of research operations completed to date is
13.9 weeks, which exceeds 90% of C-Mod's 15 week portion of the OFES JOULE
target for major facility operations in FY2009.

Run Planning
-------------

A meeting of the C-Mod Experimental Program Committee was held on Monday, May
5, to review miniproposals for the remainder of the current experimental
campaign, and to confirm plans and priorities.

OFES Review
------------

Reviews of the MIT proposal for operation of Alcator C-Mod in 2009-2013 were
held at the PSFC last week. The technical review of the proposed C-Mod
five-year program was conducted on Thursday-Friday (May 7-8, 2008). Reviewers
included Ed Synakowski (LLNL, Chair), Dick Majeski (PPPL), Mike
Kotschenreuther (U. Texas, IFS), Thomas Pedersen (Columbia U.), Rich Groebner
(GA), Steve Knowlton (Auburn U.), and John Sarff (U. Wisc). A separate review
of the Facilities and Operations was conducted on Friday, May 9, by Peter
Petersen (GA, Chair), Janos Kirz (LBNL), and Al von Halle (PPPL). Rostom
Dagazian (OFES) participated in both reviews and provided the charge for the
reviewers. Links to vugraphs of the five year program presentations are
available on the web at http://www.psfc.mit.edu/research/alcator/program .


DNB Systems
-----------

A vacuum leak from a cooling water line in the arc source developed during
testing on Thursday. The arc source unit was removed and repairs are underway.

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

The transmission line for the J-port antenna has been modified for operation
at 70 MHz, and FMIT Transmitters #3 and 4 have been retuned to this frequency
in support of experiments scheduled for this week.

Travel and Visitors
--------------------

Yijun Lin attended the 4th US-PRC magnetic fusion collaboration workshop held
at University of Texas, Austin from May 5 to 6. He had discussions with
Chinese fusion researchers on C-Mod collaborations and also presented recent
C-Mod ICRF results at the workshop.

David Mikkelsen (PPPL) visited MIT last week to work on GYRO simulations of
recent C-Mod experiments. Many discharges with systematic variations in ion
temperature profile shape were identified; transport analysis by TRANSP and
turbulence simulations by GYRO are planned soon. GYRO was installed on Loki,
the new parallel computer at PSFC.

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