The main objectives of the Poloidal Divertor Experiment (PDX) are to: (1) determine the effectiveness of poloidal divertors in controlling impurities in high temperature plasmas, (2) use the poloidal divertor to provide clean plasmas for confinement and high beta studies, and (3) investigate the effect of cross-section shaping on plasma confinement and MHD properties. In this paper, we report the results obtained during initial divertor operation of the PDX
