Alcator C-Mod Weekly Highlights October 12, 2010 FY2011 weeks of research operations Base Target: 15 weeks Base Completed: 0.0 weeks Plasma Shots: 0 Physics ------- John Rice was awarded the Nuclear Fusion Prize for Best Paper of 2010 on 11 October at the 23rd IAEA Fusion Energy Conference in Daejon, Korea. He is the first author of the paper, 'Inter-machine comparison of intrinsic toroidal rotation in tokamaks' (Nuclear Fusion 47 1618-1624) which can be found at http://herald.iop.org/NFwinners/m142/jip//link/3986 The Nuclear Fusion announcement stated: "In an area where there exists no satisfactory theoretical description, this is an important paper which presents the first systematic compilation of intrinsic rotation data across different devices. The data have been analyzed and a universal scaling showing the relationship between the central toroidal velocity and the ratio of the ion energy content to the plasma current has been proposed. The potential for predicating rotation in ITER, via extrapolation, is anticipated and this seminal paper has triggered a wealth of experimental and theoretical work." Operations ---------- The Albany Street branch of the campus wide MIT Chilled Water System was shut down last Tuesday to repair a leak. This issue delayed by one day start-up of the alternator and cool-down of the magnets. Plasma operations are expected to begin on Wednesday of this week. Final inspections of magnet supplies and bus systems were completed last week in preparation for the beginning of the FY11 campaign. Some fatigued cabling was found and is being repaired. ICRF Systems ------------ FMIT#1 and #2 have been tested and calibrations checked at up to 2 MW to verify proper operation with new IPAs and scaling circuitry. FMIT#4 has been reconfigured for plasma operation after being used for the antenna breakdown experiments during the period between the end of FY10 operation and the beginning of the FY11 campaign. Lower Hybrid System ------------------- The vector modulators that are used to control the amplitude and phase of the klystrons sometimes generate short glitches in the control system. Debugging of this problem is ongoing. A test box is being fabricated to make this work go more quickly. Work to modify the Magic T splitters in the Jungle Gym to better match the launcher to the plasma was begun last week. A sliding short was used to determine the correct length for the Magic T shorted stub. Two new klystrons have arrived at MIT and are being evaluated to ensure they suffered no damage during shipping. These tubes were procured under ARRA funding. Travel and Visitors ------------------- Igor Bespamyatnov, UT-A, visited last week to make changes to the WideView CXRS that resulted in improved spectral resolution. _______________________________________________ Cmod_weekly mailing list Cmod_weekly@lists.psfc.mit.edu http://lists.psfc.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/cmod_weekly