NSTX high field side gas fueling system

Fueling NSTX plasmas with gas injected from the high field side (HFS) has produced earlier, more reliable transitions to the H-mode, longer H-mode durations, higher toroidal rotation, and higher edge T_e compared with similar discharges using the low field side (LFS) gas fueling injectors. The HFS gas fueling system consists of a center stack midplane injector, and an injector at the inner, upper corner of the center stack. The challenging design and installation constraints for the HFS gas system involved placing the control components as close as possible to the machine-vacuum interface, devising a special feed-through flange, traversing through vessel regions whose temperatures during bake-out range from 150 C to 350 C, adapting the gas transport tubing size and route to the small instrumentation wire channels behind the existing graphite PFC tiles on the center stack, and providing output orifices shielded from excessive plasma power depositions while concentrating the output flow to facilitate fast camera viewing and analysis. Design, recent performance, and future upgrades will be presented.