NSTX Team Meeting

1. NSTX Supported by NSTX Team Meeting Culham Sci Ctr U St. Andrews York U Chubu U Fukui U Hiroshima U Hyogo U Kyoto U Kyushu U Kyushu Tokai U NIFS Niigata U U Tokyo JAEA Hebrew U Ioffe Inst RRC Kurchatov Inst TRINITI KBSI KAIST POSTECH ASIPP ENEA, Frascati CEA, Cadarache IPP, Jülich IPP, Garching ASCR, Czech Rep U Quebec College W&M Colorado Sch Mines Columbia U Comp-X General Atomics INEL Johns Hopkins U LANL LLNL Lodestar MIT Nova Photonics New York U Old Dominion U ORNL PPPL PSI Princeton U Purdue U SNL Think Tank, Inc. UC Davis UC Irvine UCLA UCSD U Colorado U Maryland U Rochester U Washington U Wisconsin June 21, 2011

2. NSTX Team Meeting Agenda Time: 1:30 ~ 3:00, June 21, 2011 Place: LSB 318, PPPL • General / Program Items (40 minutes) • Engineering Operations Update (15 minutes) • Research Operations Update (15 minutes) • New CS/2nd NBI Project Update (15 minutes) • New Publication Acknowledgement Policy (5 minutes)

3. Safely, Safely, Safely • ES&H Issues (J. Levine) • The outage is complete and we are starting to prepare for the plasma operations. • Thanks for working safely! • Please make sure that you understand the NSTX Test Cell Access Rules: The rule can change with the radiation level in the NTC - Please be alert! • With NTC access permit and your own radiation badge, you can access yourself not others • People without NTC access permit would require the Health Physics issued radiation badge and proper paper work • Removal of radiation exposed material from NTC requires Health Physics radiation survey • Only items brought in during the non-operating day can be brought out without the radiation survey.

4. NSTX Facility Exceeded Operational TargetsFacility Operated Safely for Ten Consecutive Years All facility and diagnostic milestones achieved on schedule in FY2009 and FY2010 Achieved record number of total plasma shots and plasma shots per week for each of FY2009 and FY2010, and 4.2 run weeks operated thus far in FY2011. Introduction of lithium improved shots/week by ~ 50 % since the pre-lithium operations. NSTX Plasma Operation Statistics NSTX received the State of New Jersey Commissioner of Labor and Workforce Development’s 2010 Continued Excellence Award for working 10 consecutive years (2,011,666 hours) without an away from work lost time injury/illness case.

5. Strong Publications and Conference ParticipationsGrowing Number of Highly Capable Young Researchers * Includes 18 submitted manuscripts • Half of the publications and invited talks were led by collaborators • 8 of 16 PRLs published in 2009-2011 were led by students and junior research NSTX Research Team Membership: Team consists of 58 PPPL researchers and 195 non-PPPL researchers Growing number of young researchers : 23 post-docs (up from 11 in 2008, 2 ARRA, 2 ORISE Fellows), and 24 students

6. 2nd International Lithium Symposium Was Highly Productive Very Broad Fusion Community Participations with 53 Presentations NSTX Goal: To investigate effectiveness of lithium for divertor heat and particle control while enhancing plasma performance. • The latest experimental results from nine magnetic fusion devices were presented in 24 presentations from NSTX (PPPL, USA), LTX (PPPL.USA), FT-U (ENEA, Italy), T11M (Trinity, RF), T-10 (Kurchatov Institute), TJ-II (CIEMAT, Spain), EAST (ASIPP, China), HT-7 (ASIPP, China), and RFX (Padova, Italy). • There were nine lithium PMI test stand presentations from PPPL, University of Illinois, Purdue University, Penn State University, CIEMAT (Spain), State Poly technic University (Russia), and KTM (Kazakhstan). • In the special liquid lithium technology session, three IFMIF talks, one IFE, and three TBM related talks were presented. • There were nine innovative lithium application presentations. • It is note worthy that eleven presentations were made by students. • Finally, a panel discussion “Is lithium PFC viable in magnetic fusion reactors such as ITER?” motivated from the first lithium symposium was held with nine panelists representing various liquid lithium research groups.

7. Increased Boundary Physics Emphasis for PMI and FNSF Liquid Lithium Covered Moly Surfaces Reduced Carbon Influx Split-top Moly on SS tile satisfies design requirements ~ 1” thick Moly (TZM) tiles New moly tiles ATJ graphite “end cap” LLD SS “barrel” nuts with ¼-20 screws ~ 1” thick SS base LLD Status: • Plasma heating effectively raised the LLD surface temperature to ~ 200 - 250 °C. • No significant LLD surface damage nor moly influx observed with direct divertor strike point • LLD plates cleaned and reinstalled with some mechanical support enhancements Molybdenum tiles now on inboard divertor Replace the second row tiles with 1” moly tiles All 48 tiles are moly including three diagnostic tiles Lithium coating with LITER ~ 2 x outer LLD rate Plasma heating can liquify lithium surfaces • Developing attractive solutions for post-upgrade long-pulse power & particle handling PFCs/divertor are high priority boundary physics task for FY2013. • Decision in 2012 and conceptual design in 2013 for moly-tile and divertor upgrades.

8. NSTX Lithium Dropper Helped To Achieve H-modes on EASTMHD Suppressed and Impurities Reduced by Active Li Powder Injection ~ Li Powder (50 gm) Resonating Piezoelectric Disk (2.25 kHz) Li injection during long plasma operation in EAST

9. New Colleagues at NSTX • Three ASIPP (Institute of Plasmas Physics, Chinese Academy of Science, Hefei, China) researchers, Kaifu Gan, Cao Bin, and Ling Zhang arrived PPPL on March 24, 2011 to collaborate on NSTX. Qing Zang and Wang Liang are visiting LTX. • Kaifu (student) will be working with the ORNL divertor IR camera team on the divetor heat load physics, • Cao (student) will be working on the Gas-Puff-Imaging diagnostic for the edge turbulence transport physics, and • Ling (post doctoral fellow) will be working on the spectroscopy for impurity and particle transport physics. • Rory J. Perkins is our new NSTX post doctoral fellow for HHFW.

10. NSTX Upgrade Project BaselinedCost and Schedule is locked in • Baselined December 2010 (CD-2 Approved!) • Begin Upgrade Outage: April 2012 • Base Completion Date: September 2014 In FY12, the NSTX operations team shifts to the Upgrade Project on April1. It is therefore critically important to end the NSTX operation in February 2012 so that we can start the Upgrade Outage on April 1, 2012

11. Call for FY-2012 LDRD ProposalsJ. Hosea • This is a call for submission of LDRD Proposals for fiscal year 2012 (the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2011).  • The purpose of this program is to stimulate creative and strategic research activities within PPPL that involve top quality science together with high potential for establishing their own funding stream in the future.  • This can involve research in allied areas which would enable a broadening of PPPL plasma science activities and stimulate healthy cross-fertilization of ideas.  • The laboratory encourages proposals that contribute to the strategic initiatives and possible new fusion concepts. Even with a favorable budget outcome, NSTX FY 2012 base budget will be very tight due to the end of ARRA funding and the NSTX upgrade ramp-up. Please contribute to LDRD while having productive time doing it!

12. Recent Budget NewsThe Budget News is better than anticipated! • FY 2011: • No reduction in the FY 2011 NSTX base funding which is a good news! • However, our FY2011 operations budget is overrunning so we need to carefully watch our expenses for the rest of the fiscal year. • FY 2012 budget process has begun favorably - the U. S. House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water funding recommendation: • The Committee recommends $406,000,000 for fusion energy sciences, $30,537,000 above fiscal year 2011 and $6,300,000 above the request. • The budget request proposes $105,000,000 for ITER, the first full-scale test reactor for fusion energy. • The US fusion base budget is relatively flat. Even at the recommended level, NSTX FY 2012 base budget is very tight due to the end of ARRA funding and the NSTX upgrade ramp-up.