Newsgroups: sci.physics.plasma
From WOLFE@CMOD2.PFC.MIT.EDU Tue Aug 8 15:35:51 1995
From: WOLFE@CMOD2.PFC.MIT.EDU
Organization: MIT
Subject: Alcator C-MOD Weekly Highlights

Alcator C-MOD Weekly Highlights
August 8, 1995

The scheduled maintenance and upgrade period on Alcator C-MOD continued last
week. Preparation for the fall operating campaign is progressing well.

The E-port antenna and backplane have been cleaned up and are now ready for
re-installation.

All the new halo Rogowskis have been installed. Cabling from the new loops to
the feedthroughs still needs to be run. A replacement for flux loop F16, which
had been intermittant during the last operating period, has been installed.

The pre-prototype cryopump was successfully cooled to LHe temperature on the
vacuum test stand. This locally-produced unit is being used to confirm the
prototype pump and tranfer line design and provide early evaluation of
expected performance. The prototype unit, which will be the first module to be
installed in C-MOD, is being fabricated by a commercial vendor.

The outer divertor covers at F and K-ports have been re-installed after being
fitted with new glass sock gaskets. These gaskets are being installed on all
the divertor modules in order to eliminate an approximately 1 cm high gas
conductance path from the divertor volume back into the main chamber.
Calculations indicate a substantial increase in divertor compression ratio
(ratio of divertor neutral pressure to midplane pressure) should result.

The EF4 supplies transferred from LLNL have been received on-site and
installed in their final location in the power room.

A new SCSI based serial highway interface has been installed on our new
AlphaServer system and the CAMAC devices that were connected to one of our
slower data acquisition computers (DAQ1) have been reconnected to the new
serial highway. In addition, the SCSI serial highway interface that was
attached to one of the analysis workstations (MAX) has been moved to the new
AlphaServer system. Since the magnetic disks that the data is written to are
connected to the AlphaServer, the above changes should provide better data
acquisition performance and reduce network traffic.

Roger Richards from ORNL is at Alcator this week continuing the setup of his
ion scattering diagnostic. He is being assisted by Dr. Chuck Bennett of the
University of North Carolina.