Alcator C-Mod Weekly Highlights June 27, 2011 FY2011 weeks of research operations Target: 15 weeks Completed: 14.5 weeks Plasma Shots: 1706 Physics ------- Aaron Bader is attending the ITER summer school in Aix-en-Provence, France on a USBPO scholarship. The summer school topic this year is MHD instabilities and Energetic Particles. A video-conference was held between the group of H. Wilson at the University of York (UK) and several members of the Alcator C-Mod team to discuss the link between recent theoretical work carried out by PhD student D. Dickinson, U. York, and experimental observations of differences between the QC-mode of EDA H-mode and the Weakly Coherent Mode featured in I-mode. Several significant differences are seen, in particular the fact that the WCM does not appear to have its peak amplitude at the outer midplane; an observation that is qualitatively consistent with theoretical predictions in certain situations. Further collaborative efforts are planned with respect to studying these phenomena. Participants at MIT included Dennis Whyte, Amanda Hubbard, Jerry Hughes, Anne White, Arturo Dominguez, Earl Marmar, David Pace, Jim Terry, Naoto Tsujii, Steve Wolfe, and Ted Golfinopoulos. Operations ---------- In-vessel work was concerned primarily with re-installation of outer divertor, heat shield, and steel C-plate components last week. Four of the outer divertor modules were tightened to their torque specification. Drafting of a oneline schematic that will show the details of the power connections and equipment that will be needed to move the EF2 power supplies to the alternator was begun. The preventive maintenance work for the magnet power supplies continued with the cleaning of the cabinets, bus work, and commutation switches. ICRF Systems ------------ An FMIT#2 water leak in the driver cabinet was repaired, and the water system was successfully tested last week. The vacuum breakers for all the FMIT transmitters were serviced last week. Work continued on the ARRA funded rotated antenna. We have received and accepted all plated bellows tubes and are readying them for welding. The strip lines have been plated and are being prepared for vacuum bakeout. Fitup of the first set of 19 Faraday rods into the Faraday box was successful, and we have machined 14 of the 19 rods needed for the second box. Lower Hybrid System ------------------- Routine maintenance of the LH High Voltage Power Supply (HVPS) was started last week. Air filters were replaced and a general cleanup was completed. The HVPS circuit breaker will be inspected by an outside vendor. Components for the Transmitter Protection System continue be designed and fabricated. A set of documents and photos sent by our vendor detailing the new klystron power supplies is under review. Assuming no issues are found the vendor expects delivery to be on schedule. Travel and Visitors ------------------- The PSFC and Dennis Whyte hosted a TEDx (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Boston event which featured tours of Alcator C-Mod and the Plasma-Surface Interaction laboratory. The "adventure" attracted approximately 50 participants in the spirit of TED to "share good ideas". A discussion took place after the tours on the role of fusion and plasma research in shaping future energy decisions. Wonjae Lee from National Fusion Research Institute (NFRI) in Daejeon, Korea will be visiting for the next month, working on the imaging x-ray spectrometer system, and performing data analysis. Steve Scott, PPPL, completed a visit to PPPL to expedite procurements for the MSE Intershot calibration system. All of the major components have been designed by Bob Mumgaard and the procurements are now in place and delivery schedules are adequate, albeit tight, to meet the installation/calibration date of August 1, when Alcator C-Mod is due complete its Spring 2011 vacuum vent. Martin Greenwald, Tom Fredian, Atma kanojia and Josh Stillerman attended the IAEA 8th technical meeting on control, data acquisition, and remote participation for fusion research. Martin presented a talk on 'A Metadata Catalog for Organization and Systemization of Fusion Simulation Data'. Tom chaired an MDSplus user's group workshop. Atma presented a poster 'Active Control System Upgrade Design for Lower Hybrid Current Drive System on ALCATOR C-MOD'. Josh was the chairman of the international program committee and program chairman for the meeting. He also presented a poster 'Iscope: a new visualization tool for MDSPlus' on behalf of Syun'ichi Shiraiwa. Dave Hill, LLNL, made a presentation on behalf of the three major US Magnetic Fusion Facilities, 'Overview of U.S. Magnetic Fusion Tokamak Experiments in Support of ITER'. _______________________________________________ Cmod_weekly mailing list Cmod_weekly@lists.psfc.mit.edu http://lists.psfc.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/cmod_weekly