Alcator C-Mod Weekly Highlights
                   June 21, 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



Experimental Program Committee Meeting
--------------------------------------

An EPC meeting was held on June 17th to review new mini-proposals and
discuss plans and issues for the start of the campaign.  Six MPs were
approved covering a wide range of topics including runaway electron
generation, lower hybrid launcher conditioning and coupling, and
measurements of mode converted waves.


Operations
----------

The 120 C bake and ECDC continued all last week as we prepared the
vessel for plasma operation.  The vessel is currently cooling down in
preparation for what we expect to be a final leak-check before we
operate the machine.  The magnet power supplies are ready for operation,
and commissioning of the new alternator cooling system is expected to be
complete early this week.


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

Power calibrations of the ten klystrons needed for the next campaign
were successfully completed last week to full power.  Phase calibrations
are proceeding and will be followed by calibrations of the new rf
probes.  High power conditioning of waveguide components is also being
done as a natural consequence of the calibration work.

A fourth klystron cart, which will provide an addition 1 MW of lower
hybrid source power, is under construction using ARRA funding.  Work on
the water cooling system for this cart began last week as the needed
components began to arrive.


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

FMIT#2 was successfully run at 2 MW into a dummy load last week and is
ready for plasma operation.  The last of our four transmitters, FMIT#1,
is currently under test.


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

One chord of the new polarimeter diagnostic has been made operational
with a return beam from one of the six inner wall retro-reflectors.  We
are currently working to optimize the alignment and reduce the level of
vibrational noise.


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

David Mikkelsen, PPPL, worked at MIT last week to finalize modifications
to MP-355 so that it can be used to optimize diagnostics for a later
experiment to determine if H and D particle transport differ. He also
worked with Nathan Howard, Yuri Podpaly, and Catherine Fiore on GYRO
turbulence simulations of impurity and momentum transport in C-Mod
plasmas. A preliminary result is that particle fluxes of trace
impurities are representable with a conventional "D and V" formalism;
this result will facilitate comparison of the predictions with the
analysis of the measured x-ray emission.
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