A crash course on ITER-related matters

Talk about a crash course! In less than three hours last Thursday in the Council Room at the Château, some 35 members of the Conseil Économique et Social (CES)—the Provence Alpes Côte d'Azur (PACA) region's advisory committee on economic and social affairs—were introduced to the ITER Project, fusion R&D, the Fusion Master's program, and the role of the Cadarache-based innovative cluster Capénergie in the development of the "energies of the future."

"Our role is to advise the regional executive body on such matters as research and higher education policy," explains Jean-François Cousinié, the President of the CES Education and Research Commission who headed the delegation. "We were curious to find out more about ITER and wished to have a clear vision of how the project relates to other research ventures in laboratories and universities."

Presentations by Pascale Amenc-Antoni, Senior Advisor to the Director-General; Richard Pitts, Senior Scientist in the Fusion Science and Technology (FST) Department; Christian Grisolia of CEA-Cadarache's Magnetic Fusion Institute; Serge Durand, director of CEA-Cadarache; and by two Université de Provence professors provided the CES members with the "picture" they needed. "Relations with the universities in Marseille and Nice are clearly strong and growing," said Cousinié after the meeting. "The challenge now is to create in the Durance River Valley something that would resemble Silicon Valley in the field of innovative energies."