An attempt was made to control global plasma confinement in the Alcator C-Mod tokamak by applying ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH) power to the plasma edge in order to deliberately create a minority ion tail loss. In theory, an edge fast ion loss could modify the edge electric field and so stabilize the edge turbulence, which might then reduce the H-mode power threshold or improve the H-mode barrier. However, the experimental result was that edge minority heating resulted in no improvement in the edge plasma parameters or global stored energy, at least at power levels of radio-frequency power is less than or equal to 5.5 MW. A preliminary analysis of these results is presented and some ideas for improvement are discussed.

Early neutral-beam injection is used in the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) to heat the electrons and slow current penetration which keeps q(0) elevated to avoid deleterious MHD activity and at the same time reduces Ohmic flux consumption, all of which aids long-pulse operation. However, the low plasma current (I{sub p} {approx} 0.5 MA) and electron density (n{sub e} {approx} 1 x 10{sup 13} cm{sup -3}) attending early injection lead to elevated orbit and shine through losses. The inherent orbit losses are aggravated by large excursions in the outer gap width during current ramp-up. An investigation of this behavior using various energetic particle diagnostics on NSTX and TRANSP code analysis is presented.

Summaries of meteorological observations collected at the Savannah River Site in 2004 show a year that was overall cooler and drier than average. Although the annual rainfall of 42.9 inches was the eleventh driest of all the years over a period of record that began in 1952, rainfall was quite variable through the year. September total rainfall of 10.26 inches was the highest in this 53 year record; conversely, the monthly rainfall in March, 0.81 inches, was the lowest on record. Rainfall of 0.01 inch or more occurred on 104 days during the year. The annual average temperature for 2004, 63.4 degrees F, was the eleventh coldest of any year in an available record that dates to 1964. Cooler than average conditions were observed in 9 of the 12 months of the year. The coldest temperature during the year was 20.3 degrees F on the morning of December 15; the warmest observed temperature was 98.2 degrees F on the afternoon of July 14. The most notable weather event of 2004 was an active Atlantic hurricane season that resulted in six named storms striking the Southeast U.S. during August and September. Although each of these storms posed a significant threat to …

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