Alcator C-Mod Weekly Highlights
                   June 7, 2010


Fy2010 weeks of research operations
    Base Target: 13 weeks
    Base Completed: 9.7 weeks
    ARRA Target: 5 weeks
    ARRA Completed: 5.0 weeks
    Plasma Shots: 1630



Operations
----------

Commissioning of the Alternator Cooling Upgrade started last week and
will continue this week.  Minor issues with actuators and control valve
programming have been discovered and are being addressed.

In-vessel alignment and calibration activities are nearly complete.
Clean-up and wipe-down of the vessel walls have begun. Bake, ECDC,
vacuum, and power systems are being prepared for operation.


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

Three new klystrons, purchased using incremental ARRA funds, arrived at
MIT last Thursday.  Basic testing of the tubes has begun to ensure they
made the cross-country trip without incident.

All microwave cabling to the launcher has been installed.  The lower
hybrid launcher positioning system has been calibrated.


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

Instrumentation and control boards for the transmitters have been
checked for proper operation.  Following this activity, FMIT#3 was tuned
and successfully operated into a dummy load to 1.8 MW.  FMIT#4 is now
being prepared for final tuning and high power testing.


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

A comprehensive set of calibration and performance data was obtained
this week for the Motional Stark Effect (MSE) diagnostic using a robotic
calibration system.  The MSE diagnostic is fully assembled, calibrated,
and ready for plasma measurements in the upcoming experimental campaign.

HiReX Sr has been upgraded with a larger flange and better supports to
deal with the vignetting and positioning issues discovered during the
previous campaign. Initial work was performed on a new filter
calibration system.


Travel and Remote Participation
-------------------------------

Manfred Bitter and Ken Hill, PPPL, were at MIT June 1-2. They worked
with John Rice, Luis Delgado-Aparicio, Yuri Podpaly, and Chi Gao to
align the HiReX Sr diagnostic and improve crystal positioning.

Will Bergerson, UCLA, arrived at MIT last week to begin work full time
on the MIT/UCLA Polarimeter collaboration.  David Brower and Weixing
Ding are also heavily involved in this collaboration.

Ted Golfinopolos and Geoffrey Olynyk participated in the ITER
International Summer School at the University of Texas at Austin.  The
school focused primarily on control issues in tokamaks, with particular
emphasis on resistive wall modes, vertical stability, and neoclassical
tearing modes.

Didier Elbeze, CEA Cadarache (Tore Supra group), visited MIT last week.
He gave a seminar entitled "ECE measurements on Tore Supra: from the
diagnostics to the MHD mode observations".  While here he worked with
Amanda Hubbard, Anne White and Perry Phillips (U Texas), looking at fast
ECE signals from C-Mod experiments and discussing future collaborations.
He also had discussions with Jim Irby, Peng Xu, and Will Bergerson on
polarimetry.

Perry Phillips, UT-FRC, was at MIT to prepare the FRCECE diagnostic for
the next campaign, to plan data acquisition upgrades, and to plan new
experiments.
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