During the past year, several magnetic pulse compression systems have been built and applied to the ETA accelerator. In view of their excellent performance, a non-linear magnetic system has been adopted for the ATA grid drive in place of the spark gap driven Blumlein. The magnetic system will give us a much higher reliability and greater flexibility by being independent of the high pressure gas blown system. A further advantage of this system will be the capability of achieving higher rep-rates in case of a future upgrade. System design and performance under burst mode will be described.

The pressure on the boundary of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's (LLNL) tandem mirror (TMX-U) plasma experiment is difficult to trace for several reasons: (1) the TMX-U boundary is in the high vacuum range (10/sup -5/ to 10/sup -6/ Pa) and requires an ionization gauge; (2) the boundary includes high-energy neutral particles and radiation, so the gauge must be optically baffled from the plasma; (3) the gauge must be shielded from the magnetic flux density of 0.03 T; (4) maximum conductance to the gauge must be preserved so that the time response remains about 1 ms; (5) a fast electrical circuit is required to measure the small ion-current changes at a rate consistent with the geometrical and experimental time constant of 1 ms. We have developed solutions to these limitations, including fast ionization gauge (FIG) circuitry for the remote gauge operation and the CAMAC system for recording the pressure-time history in the TMX-U computer data base. We also give some examples of actual fast pressure histories during plasma operation.

This report is a study of the transients caused by the fast dump of large superconducting coils. Theoretical analysis, computer simulation, and actual measurements are used. Theoretical analysis can only be applied to the simplest of models. In the computer simulations two models are used, one in which the coil is divided into ten segments and another in which a single coil is employed. The circuit breaker that interrupts the current to the power supply, causing a fast dump, is represented by a time and current dependent conductance. Actual measurements are limited to measurements made incidental to the coils' performance tests.