News from MAST - December 2004

MAST Status

The 2004 experimental campaign ended on Friday 5th November as planned. MAST was vented to atmospheric pressure to allow work to proceed on a number of tasks aimed at further diagnostic optimisation. These included a number of port flange changes, cleaning of diagnostic windows, re-configuration and re-installation of measuring instruments etc. Preparations were made for improved edge Thomson scattering measurements and the views of the vertically mounted soft x-ray cameras were re-optimised. Improvements have also been made to the gas injection systems. The vessel was pumped down and high temperature baking of the vessel has been completed. Other prominent engineering tasks carried out in parallel with the tasks outlined above included commissioning of the new neutral beam injector and various maintenance and inspection activities (e.g. centre column, power supplies, NBI source filaments etc.). Operation will recommence in January 2005 and the physics programme will begin in early February. A number of new Session Leaders are being trained to operate MAST in 2005.

MAST Operating Schedule Options for 2005

MAST Results Review & Research Forum 2005

The next MAST Results Review and Research Forum will be held on the 1st and 2nd of February 2005 at Culham Science Centre, Abingdon, UK. All collaborators are welcome to attend. It is intended to implement facilities to allow remote participation. Previous meetings were held in September 2002 and in January 2004. The aim of the forthcoming forum is to discuss and review the proposed experimental programme for 2005 in the light of existing results and high priority R & D needs for both ITER and future spherical tokamak devices.

Collaboration Activities

The annual Culham - Ioffe Symposium was held at Culham Science Centre 29 Nov - 1 Dec 2004. Nine physicists from the A F Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in St. Petersburg participated in the symposium.

The MAST team was well-represented at the 3rd IEA Large Tokamak Workshop (W58) on "Implementation of the ITPA Co-ordinated Research Recommendations", 8 - 10th December, Eynsham Hall, Nr. Oxford UK, and will be participating in a wide range of co-ordinated joint experiments with other tokamak teams in 2005.

Brian Lloyd visited both the Hongo and Kashiwa campuses of Tokyo University for discussions with Professors Yasushi Ono and Yuichi Takase respectively.

Doug Mc Cune of PPPL visited Culham to discuss TRANSP-based collaborative activities.

Mattias Kuldkepp (KTH, Stockholm) is visiting MAST to work with Mike Walsh.

Publications & Presentations

A number of prominent MAST presentations were made at the 20th IAEA Fusion Energy Conference in Vilamoura, Portugal 1 - 6 Nov. 2004. Key results from MAST were summarised in an overview presentation by Glenn Counsell.

Anthony Field, Hendrik Meyer, Rob Akers and Glenn Counsell attended ITPA meetings in Lisbon immediately after the IAEA conference.

Alan Sykes and Geof Cunningham attended the 46th APS meeting in Savannah, USA where they presented a talk on "Plasma formation without a central solenoid in MAST" and a poster entitled "Overview of MAST results", respectively. There was also a poster on "The role of magnetic equilibria in determining ECE in MAST" by J Preinhaelter et al.

Brian Lloyd delivered an invited talk to the annual JSPF meeting in Shizuoka, Japan, 23 - 26 Nov. 2004, entitled "MAST and the role of spherical tokamaks in advancing tokamak physics".

The following journal publications have recently been issued:

"MAST and the impact of low aspect ratio on tokamak physics"
B Lloyd et al 2004, Plasma Phys. Contr. Fusion 46 B477.

"Zeff profile measurements from bremsstrahlung imaging in the MAST spherical tokamak"
A Patel et al 2004, Rev. Sci. Instrum. 75 4944.