Europe delivers a world class test facility

If we are truly committed to the idea of a sustainable energy mix—with fusion as one of the elements—then we need to invest in facilities that will bring us a step closer to the realization of commercial fusion by helping us test the technology and the components of current and future fusion devices.

 

This is precisely the purpose of the European Dipole project (EDIPO) launched in 2005, whose mission is to manufacture a high field magnet that would ultimately be used to test ITER cable-in-conduit conductors with current up to 100 kA. Switzerland's Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), at the Centre of Research in Physics and Plasma (CRPP), is hosting this facility that was built thanks to a collaboration between CRPP, BNG (Babcock Nöll), the European Domestic Agency for ITER, and the European Commission.

 

The stakes for EDIPO were high from the very start because it had to meet two important conditions. First, it had to offer the fusion community the possibility to test short sample conductors in a magnetic field up to 12.5 Tesla—an unprecedented level for this type of facility—in order to mimic the ITER environment. Second, the conductors had to be tested at this level of magnetic field over a length equivalent to about 800 mm, which is roughly two times the high field length of the conductors currently tested in SULTAN.