On Tuesday 22 September, the Center for Research in Plasma Physics (CRPP) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne became the Swiss Plasma Center in the presence of officials from the
EUROfusion consortium for the development of fusion energy and the Director-General of the ITER Project, Bernard Bigot.
The change of name heralds a new era for the research centre, which hosts the Variable Configuration Tokamak TCV. Following a CHF 10 million grant from the Swiss government, the Center will upgrade its facilities and expand its scope of activities. New experiments will be carried out on the TCV tokamak—particularly in relation to extracting energy and particles from the plasma—and new mechanisms for heating the plasma with microwaves and with the injection of neutral particles may be installed. The Center is also expanding its sector of research to lower density and lower temperature plasmas in order to explore new applications for plasma.