Highlights for week ending October 12, 2001

[Barbara Sobel]

The PPPL Highlights for the week ending October 12, 2001 are as follows:

NSTX (M. ONO):

The availability of time-dependent ion temperature data has been the 
basis for studying both the global confinement and local transport 
properties of the NSTX plasmas.  Used as a basis for computing the 
total stored energy, these results from the kinetics agree favorably 
with those as computed from external magnetics (generally within 
15%).  There are some differences as compared to the diamagnetic loop 
signal, which will be studied.  These data are also used as the basis 
for studying the transport properties of the plasmas, using TRANSP 
and GS2.  Preliminary results indicate that the ion channel is better 
confined than the electron channel.  Also, predictive simulations 
suggest that it is possible to match the measured ion temperatures 
assuming neoclassical transport and channeling some of the 
beam-electron heating power to the ions.  This result will be studied 
in the framework of the possible effects of the CAEs (Compressional 
Alfven Eigenmodes.)

The NSTX outage activities continued this past week with the 
installation of external hardware for the center stack gas injection 
system.  The re-installation of the remaining TF flexible bus links 
will be completed this coming week. The installation of the Inner 
Wall Gas Fueling system was completed from outside the umbrella 
structure, to a top Inner Vessel port, through a special 
feed-through, and down to the mid-plane.  The TF flex bus 
reinstallation was completed and the umbrella lid was reinstalled. 
The damaged in-vessel flux loops have been replaced.  In-vessel Flux 
Loop feedthru termination work has started.  The new Bay K port cover 
is now mounted with associated FIReTIP (Far Infrared Laser Tangential 
Interferometer and Polarimeter) shutter for the FIR laser input. This 
port will also accommodate the scanning NPA (Neutral Particle 
Analyzer) and the Fast Tangential X-ray Camera. Three holes for gas 
injection were cut into the vacuum vessel at bay J.  The NPA rail 
structure installation commenced.  Good progress continues to be made 
on the fabrication/installation of the high temperature Helium 
bakeout Skid and the fluorinert based TF cooling system.  The high 
temperature bakeout skid was installed in the pumproom, and field 
installation the flourinert system and Bakeout system continued. Both 
systems are on schedule to support start up activities in November 
and December.  The present schedule shows completion of the in-vessel 
work by November 2nd, in-vessel diagnostic calibration activities by 
mid-November and pump down by the end of November. NSTX machine areas 
will remain in card reader access 24 hours/day through the coming 
weeks.

Two personnel (G. Pizzicaroli and R. Borelli) from Frascati, Italy 
arrived at PPPL to work with D. Pacella (Frascati visiting scientist 
at PPPL in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University) for the 
coming month.  They made preliminary measurements of the area around 
Bay G as the proposed location for installing the GEM X-ray detector 
this spring.  The instrument and its electronics were received from 
Italy last week, and they are being set up in for testing in a 
laboratory at PPPL.  The installation schedule for the combined 
collection optics for MSE (Motional Stork Effect) and CHERS (Charge 
Exchange Recombination Spectroscopy) has been delayed, in part due to 
difficulties in delivery with fiber optics.

OFF SITE RESEARCH (N. SAUTHOFF):

DIII-D Collaborations (L. Johnson):

Testing in vacuum of the refurbished P1999 remotely steerable 
ECH/ECCD launcher at PPPL continues, and the launcher is scheduled to 
be shipped from PPPL this week.  The new launcher (P2001) is 
scheduled to undergo final tests in the vacuum test stand.  It should 
be shipped about a week after the P1999 launcher.

C-Mod Collaborations (G. Schilling):

Stewart Zweben was at MIT 10/9-12 to present a dry-run of his invited 
talk on the gas puff imaging diagnostic results for the upcoming APS 
meeting.  Good suggestions were obtained from our C-Mod colleagues. 
He continued discussions on edge turbulence modeling with Klaus 
Hallatscheck, IPP Garching, and Barrett Rogers, Dartmouth, who were 
also present this week.

Work is continuing as well on our ideas for upgrading the 
reflectometer to allow core turbulence measurements to be obtained, 
and on repairing and upgrading the MSE diagnostic optical system.

International Collaborations (Raffi Nazikian):

Larry Grisham is spending two weeks at JT-60U continuing the effort 
to understand and improve the performance of the JT-60U negative ion 
sources.  This visit will focus on obtaining data scans to better 
understand the dominant physical mechanisms governing the negative 
ion current density in beamlets at grid sector boundaries. This 
information will be used in the redesign of the plasma, extractror, 
and accelerator grids.

A paper entitled "Radial Patterns of Instability and Transport in 
JT-60U Internal Transport Barrier Discharges" by G. Rewoldt et al., 
has been accepted for publication in Nuclear Fusion.  The paper 
explores the contribution of rotation to the stabilization of 
microinstabilities in JT-60U plasmas using the FULL analysis code.

  ADVANCED PROJECTS (J. SCHMIDT):

Stellarator Program (H. Neilson)

The NCSX project team began the task of updating its experimental 
program plan for the conceptual design review. An initial version of 
the plan was presented at the physics validation review. The current 
update will take the planning to the next level of detail, namely the 
identification of research topics for each phase of the program and, 
based on that, a mapping to time-phased hardware capability 
requirements. A draft physics topic list for the first six phases of 
the program was issued for comment. Several topics were identified in 
each of the areas of plasma control, transport, MHD equilibrium and 
stability, energetic particles, wave-particle interactions, and 
boundary physics. Each activity typically involves making a certain 
set of measurements in order to test theoretical predictions. From 
such a listing, the required machine and diagnostic capabilities for 
each phase will be determined. Input on the topic list and the plans 
for mapping to diagnostic requirements is expected at the upcoming 
NCSX Program Advisory Committee meeting in November.

THEORY (W. TANG):

Dr. E. Valeo (in collaboration with Drs. G. Kramer and R. Nazikian of 
the Experimental Department) has developed a two-dimensional wave 
propagation code specifically to simulate correlation reflectometry 
in large-scale fusion plasmas.  The code makes use of separate 
computational methods in the vacuum, under-dense and reflection 
regions of the plasma in order to obtain the high computational 
efficiency necessary for correlation analysis.  Detailed benchmarking 
with 1-D full wave solutions has been performed. Integration of the 
reflectometer simulation code with GTC simulation of turbulence in 
fusion scale plasmas is currently underway. This work represents 
significant progress in the use of reflectometry as a quantitative 
diagnostic of turbulent fluctuations.

Drs. D. Monticello and G. Fu have been honored for their scientific 
as well as collaborative contributions as part of Oak Ridge National 
Laboratory's QPS research team which will be receiving the Scientific 
Research by a Team Award at ORNL's annual awards banquet.  Dr. Stan 
Milora, head of ORNL's Fusion Energy Science Program, states that 
this "reflects well on PPPL and speaks volumes about  the quality and 
relevance of the work of the entire Compact Stellarator Program team."

Dr. Daren Stotler has been asked to give an invited talk on "Magnetic 
Confinement Fusion, Plasma Modeling, and Edge Transport at the 13th 
APS Topical Conference on Atomic Processes in Plasmas (APiP) to be 
held in Gatlinburg, TN, April 22 -25, 2002.

An article entitled "Shear-Alfven Waves in Gyrokinetic Plasmas" by 
Drs. W. W. Lee, J. L. V. Lewandowski, T. S. Hahm and Z. Lin has just 
appeared in Physics of Plasmas <8>, 4435 (October 2001). This paper 
describes the numerical verification of important 
fluctuation-dissipation properties of shear-Alfven waves using the 
split-weight particle simulation scheme.  This work is particularly 
relevant to the proper kinetic simulation of electromagnetic plasmas.

  PLASMA PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY (P. EFTHIMION):

A key problem in accelerator physics is the development of robust 
theoretical models capable of describing intense beam propagation 
over thousands of lattice periods of the periodic focusing field 
configuration. In a recent calculation [Physical Review Special 
Topics on Accelerators and Beams 4, in press (2001)] Ron Davidson and 
Hong Qin have developed a guiding-center kinetic model based on the 
nonlinear Vlasov-Maxwell equations that describes intense beam 
propagation over long distances through a periodic focusing lattice. 
By averaging over the (fast) oscillations occurring on the length 
scale S of a lattice period, the analysis leads to 'smooth-focusing' 
Vlasov-Maxwell equations that describe the slow evolution of the 
guiding-center distribution function and self-generated fields. The 
full influence of space-charge effects is included in the analysis, 
and the model can be applied at beam intensities ranging from those 
of interest in high energy and nuclear physics to those of interest 
in heavy ion fusion.

Igor Kaganovich and Ron Davidson attended a heavy ion fusion workshop 
in San Leandro, California, on October 9 and 10, which discussed the 
scientific objectives and design concepts for the Integrated Beam 
Experiment (IBX). The IBX is envisioned as a major research facility 
that would integrate the physics of the source, beam propagation and 
acceleration, pulse shaping and drift compression, and final focus 
and beam-plasma interactions in the target chamber, in a single 
experiment. The characteristic beam current and energy would be in 
the range of 10 A and 10 MeV (potassium), a significant advance 
beyond today's facilities, and IBX would investigate a wide range of 
important physics issues central to the delivery of a high-fidelity 
beam pulse to a small focal spot size.

COMPUTATIONAL PLASMA PHYSICS GROUP (S. JARDIN/D. MCCUNE):

A new Intel Beowulf cluster, named petrel, with 24 dual processor 1.7 
GHz, 1GB processors and 10 0.73 GHz 512MB processors with Myrinet 
connectivity has been installed with joint funding from CPPG, Theory, 
and Off-site.  You can presently log into petrel001 ... petrel020 
using ssh from the unix cluster.  The full unix cluster software is 
being installed.  Instructions for use of the machines as a parallel 
cluster will be forthcoming.

The Fusion Energy Sciences section of the "NERSC Greenbook" being 
used to justify the need for the NERSC-IV procurement has been 
submitted in collaboration with B.Braams (NYU), B.Cohen (LLNL), 
D.Spong (ORNL), D.Batchelor (ORNL), and A.Friedman (LBL). You can 
view the fusion section at http://w3.pppl.gov/~jardin/greenbook.pdf .

LiWei Zhao, from the University of Pennsylvania, presented a CPPG 
seminar on a novel 3D character animation toolkit.  It was 
demonstrated that a motion capture system and video capture system 
were developed to extract motion from live performances and to encode 
these in animated characters.

ENGINEERING AND INFRASTRUCUTRE (M. WILLIAMS):

The first TFTR vacuum vessel sector was successfully removed on 
10/11/01 and  placed on the disassembly fixture.   The disassembly 
fixture will be used to rotate the TF coils off of the vacuum vessel 
as part of the size reduction necessary for shipping and disposal.

Set-up is under way for the third and fourth Diamond Wire Cuts of the 
TFTR vacuum vessel.

Diagnostics vacuum piping removals in the Test Cell Basement are continuing.

The removal of cabling from the Test Cell Basement cable trays is continuing.

BUSINESS OPERATIONS: (E. WINKLER):

FY2001 year-end financial data, along with ancillary reports, was 
submitted to the DOE. There are a number of follow-up reports related 
to the year-end closing that will be submitted to the DOE during the 
next several weeks.

The Chicago Operations Office has provided DOE with $2.5 million of 
FY2002 funding pursuant to the terms of a Continuing Resolution. This 
provides the Laboratory with the capacity to conduct operations for a 
period of fifteen days.

Arlene White attended a seminar on "Intercultural Differences and 
What They Mean to International Business" sponsored by the Mercer 
County Community College Center for Global Business. Arlene is an 
advisor to this group, which seeks international business 
opportunities for Mercer County's small business firms.

ES& H INFRASTRUCUTRE (J. W. ANDERSON):

ERWM
An NJDEP Inspector visited PPPL to conduct an air compliance 
inspection.  Mr. Davis of NJDEP Air Enforcement Branch inspected 
equipment and records that require an air certificate in order to 
operate.  This equipment includes the boilers, large aboveground 
storage tanks, dust collectors and associated equipment (saws, drill 
presses, etc.), and emergency diesel generators.  He found everything 
to be in order; PPPL learned that the above ground tanks have an 
annual throughput limit, which was previously unknown. Those limits, 
which appeared to be based on average annual consumption, need to be 
changed to more realistic maximum amounts.

ES&H
A Management Safety Walkthru of the NSTX Test Cell and Gallery was 
performed on October 9.  Several items needing corrections were 
identified.

A Day-long Safety Forum is scheduled for Thursday, October 18, 2001. 
The Forum will include two guest speakers and a variety of exhibits 
from vendors providing safety related equipment.  The Forum is 
intended to help us examine as well as reinvigorate our Safety 
program.

Maintenance and Operations
Bids have been received for the Phase IV portion of the Underground 
Water Main Replacement GPP Project.  A project schedule is being 
developed.

Bids have also been received for the replacement of five C-Site 
building roofs.  Some roof replacements will start in November, 
depending upon weather

Work is continuing on the ESU Living quarters Upgrade Project.

The D-Site MG Building Fire Alarm Upgrade Project has been completed. 
A walk through will be scheduled in a few weeks.

The contractor for the LSB elevator Controls Upgrade has submitted a 
schedule.  Completion of the improvements to the East elevator is 
scheduled for December 28, 2001.  Improvements to the West elevator 
are scheduled for completion by February 8, 2002.

Plans are in progress for the replacement of the 60 HP air compressor 
in the C-Site MG Basement.

SCIENCE EDUCATION AND OUTREACH (J. DELOOPER)

On Tuesday, October 9, a news release, "Fusion Power Associates 
Honors PPPL Director Rob Goldston," was issued to area media.

On October 9 and 10, James Morgan, Chris Ritter and John DeLooper 
attended the New Jersey Science Convention in Somerset, NJ. Over 3200 
Science and Math teachers from around the state attend the meeting 
annually. Science Education promoted it's Science on Saturday Lecture 
Series, New Jersey Regional Science Bowl and the Plasma Institute for 
High School teachers.

On Wednesday, October 10, John DeLooper made a presentation on 
Plasmas to 60 science teachers at the New Jersey Science Convention.

On Wednesday, October 10, the Trenton Times ran an article about PPPL 
Director Rob Goldston receiving the Fusion Power Associates' 
Leadership Award.

On Wednesday and Thursday, October 10 and 11, Dave O'Neill took a 
total of three people on tours of NSTX. On Thursday, October 11, John 
DeLooper took a Princeton University physics grad student and three 
others on a tour of NSTX.

On Thursday, October 11, Pam Lucas attended a congressional briefing 
entitled " Diversity in Academia: A Look at Gender, Race and 
Ethnicity in Science & Engineering Departments." Speakers included 
Dr. Donna Nelson, University of Oklahoma; Dr. Lawrence Norris, 
National Society of Black Physicists and William Wulf, National 
Academy of Engineering. The Briefing was hosted by Representatives 
Vernon Ehlers (R-MI) and Eddie Bernice Johnson, both members of the 
House Committee on Science and sponsored by AAAS.

On Friday, October 12, Bob Kaita, Bill Davis, and Tom McGeachen took 
28 Princeton University freshmen parents on a tour of NSTX. On 
Saturday, October 13, Ray Camp, Henry Carnevale, John DeLooper, Ben 
LeBlanc, and Jon Menard took 170 Princeton freshmen parents on tour 
of NSTX.

The NSTX Information Bulletin was updated to include recent 
accomplishments on the experiment. The new issue, dated October 2001, 
is now available for distribution.

A new "Scientist-in-Residence" program is planned beginning next 
Spring. Andrew Post Zwicker met with teachers from the Woodrow Wilson 
Elementary School in Westfield, NJ to organize the first school.  80 
fifth grade students will work with him for six weeks on "The Sun and 
our Solar System" using hands-on activities and the Internet to 
supplement their existing curriculum.

The interactive pages of IPPEX were recently included in 
L�nkskafferiet (the Link Larder)
[http://lankskafferiet.skolverket.se/]. The Link Larder is a database 
for educational use which consists of subject structured and quality 
assessed Internet information resources chosen for Swedish pupils, 
especially those between 10 and 15 years of age.  The Link Larder was 
commissioned by and has continuing support from the Swedish National 
Agency for Education.

Officials from EnvironMent were in the cafeteria last week recruiting 
mentors for their program.  This multicultural, one-to-one mentoring 
program matches 9th, 10th and 11th grade students from Trenton 
Central and Princeton High Schools with mentors from industry, 
government and non-profit organizations. Staff members in any 
department interested in mentoring a high school student can learn 
more at http://members.aol.com/njenvmntor/.

The following PPPL reports were patent cleared and posted to the 
Publications and Reports web site:

PPPL-3603: "Tritium Removal from Codeposits on Carbon Tiles by a 
Scanning Laser" by C.H. Skinner, C.A. Gentile, A. Carpe, G. 
Guttadora, S. Langish, K.M. Young, W.M. Shu, and H. Nakamura. 
(Submitted to Journal of Nuclear Materials).

PPPL-3613: "Alpha-particle Measurements Needed for Burning Plasma 
Experiments" by Kenneth M. Young. (Presented at the International 
Conference on Advanced Diagnostics for Magnetic and Inertial Fusion 
held in Varenna, Italy, September 3-7, 2001. Conference proceedings 
to be published by Plenum Press, New York.)

PPPL-3614: "Diagnostics of ST Plasmas in NSTX: Challenges and 
Opportunities," by D. Johnson, P. Efthimion, J. Foley, B. Jones, E. 
Mazzucato, H. Park, G. Taylor, F. Levinton, and N. Luhmann. 
(Presented at the International Conference on Advanced Diagnostics 
for Magnetic and Inertial Fusion held in Varenna, Italy, September 
3-7, 2001. Conference proceedings to be published by Plenum Press, 
New York.)

The following conference abstracts were patent cleared:

Sixty-two conference abstracts for the American Physical Society's 
Division of Plasma Physics meeting to be held in Long Beach, 
California, 29 October through 2 November 2001.

Four conference abstracts for the 7th IAEA Technical Committee 
Meeting on Energetic Particles in Magnetic Confinement Systems to be 
held in Gothenburg, Sweden, 8-11 October 2001.

Three conference abstracts for the 6th International Conference on 
Tritium Science and Technology to be held in Tsukuba, Japan, 11-16 
November 2001.

DIRECTOR'S OFFICE (D. LAWSON):

The DOE Science Laboratory Directors sponsored a discussion on a DOE 
Science Laboratory Coalition.  Rob Goldston participated in the 
discussion which was held at the Library of Congress on Tuesday, 
October 9.

The DOE Laboratory Directors attended a Laboratory Operations 
Planning Retreat in Virginia on October 10-12.  The Laboratory 
Directors divided into four working groups:  Scientific Initiatives, 
Reducing the Bureaucracy, Laboratory Modernization and Staff 
Recruitment & Retention.  Rob Goldston gave a presentation on the 
Energy and Carbon Management scientific initiative.

This report is also available on the following web site:
http://www.pppl.gov/hypermail/PPPL_Highlights/.

_____________________________________________________
Barbara Sobel
Office of the Deputy Director
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
LSB384
Phone: 609 243 2602
Fax: 609 243 2749
e-mail: bsobel@pppl.gov
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