Of Interest archive

A physicist at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) is developing a code to calibrate camera views of fusion experiments.  

For the past two years, Scott Silburn has been leading the development of Calcam, a program for calibrating camera viewing geometry on fusion devices. The program allows the user to match up features seen in the camera images with those on a computer-aided design model from the drawing office at Culham. From this, the position, orientation, and lens properties of a camera system can be determined. This information can then be used to calculate exactly where the camera's lines-of-sight pass through the plasma, and also which locations on in-vessel components correspond to which positions in the image.

An example application of the code is improved positional calibration for JET's high-resolution divertor infrared cameras, which measure the heat loads at the strike points where the plasma interacts with the divertor tiles. The improved information has been used to improve the accuracy of some of the signals from the cameras, and makes it easier to compare the camera data against other diagnostic signals.

An agreable off-shoot of the technique is that it produces interesting images, as seen in the image above (photo credit: CCFE).

Read the original story here.

On 30 January, six large steel elements of the ITER cryostat left the port of Hazira, India for their one-month voyage to ITER.

These are the first segments of the cryostat lower cylinder (tier 1). On site at ITER, assembly activities (welding, testing) for the cryostat base have been underway since September 2016

A lot has happened on the construction platform since the ITER 360° virtual tour was released to the website last year with an October data set.

The first ground-level walls of the Tokamak Complex are now visible from afar, the circular bioshield dominates in the centre, and two new buildings—one for radiofrequency heating and the other for cryogenics—are now completely framed out. Elsewhere on site, excavation and early foundation works are underway and the first activities to energize the 400 kV electrical switchyard have been carried out.

The best way to catch up on recent progress is to open the January 2017 update of the 360° virtual tour.

Click here or visit the homepage of the ITER website.

In a recent statement to parliament, the UK government confirmed that—as part of withdrawal from the European Union—the UK would also withdraw from the Euratom Treaty.

On 27 January EUROfusion, which manages European fusion research activities (including the exploitation of the JET tokamak) on behalf of Euratom, issued the following statement: 

Although the withdrawal from Euratom brings in uncertainty to the future of the Joint European Torus (JET), EUROfusion's flagship experiment located at the Culham Center of Fusion Energy (CCFE) in Oxfordshire, the UK government has indicated strong interest in continuing collaboration in nuclear research. "The UK is a world leader in nuclear research and development and there is no intention to reduce our ambition in this important area. The UK fully recognises the importance of international collaboration in nuclear research and development and we will ensure this continues by seeking alternative arrangements," the government said in the statement.

[...] Researchers, engineers and technicians working at JET come from all over Europe, and currently, JET operations receive funding of €69 million, 87.5 percent of which is provided by the European Commission and 12.5 percent by the UK. It is the only existing fusion device capable of operating with the deuterium-tritium fuel, which will be the fusion fuel of the future. And, experiments carried out at JET are important foundations to the fusion experiment ITER, which is currently being built in Cadarache, France. "Naturally, the European fusion community is extremely interested to see a continuation of the JET programme," says Prof. Donné, EUROfusion program manager.

Please see the full statement on the EUROfusion website.

Aix-Marseille University and the ITER Organization are pleased to announce the 9th ITER International School which will be held in Aix-en-Provence, France, from 20-24 March 2017.

This school, held annually either near ITER or in one of the ITER Members, aims at preparing young researchers to tackle the challenges of magnetic fusion devices, and spreading the global knowledge required for a timely and competent exploitation of the ITER physics potential.

This year, the summer school will cover the physics of disruptions and control—one of the key issues for the ITER reactor and burning plasmas in general. Lectures and specialized seminars will cover current developments in theory and experiments, but are also intended to give the basics of the field. Poster sessions allowing participants to show their work are planned. The 2017 ITER school will be a good opportunity for reviewing the recent progresses in this field and promoting the interaction between different branches of plasma physics, computational physics and applied mathematics.

The course is open to PhD students and postdocs aiming to work in the field of magnetically confined fusion, as well as Master students in physics or engineering.

Registration ends on 7 March 2017. For more information, please visit the website.

Editor's note: The first ITER school was organized in July 2007 in Aix-en-Provence, France, and was focused on turbulent transport in fusion plasmas. Five different editions have followed, focused on different subjects: in 2008 in Fukuoka, Japan (magnetic confinement); in 2009 in Aix-en-Provence, France (plasma-surface interaction); in 2010 in Austin, Texas (Magneto-Hydro-Dynamics); in 2011 in Aix-en-Provence (energetic particles); in 2012 in Ahmedabad, India (radio-frequency heating), in 2014 in Aix-en-Provence (high performance computing in fusion science); and in 2016 in Hefei, China (transport and pedestal physics in tokamaks).

Could high-entropy alloys—a combination of different metals in roughly equal concentration—turn out to be THE material for fusion reactors? That's the question materials physicists from the University of Helsinki (Finland) and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (US) are investigating.

The concept behind the creation of these alloys is ten years old and was first proposed by metallurgists. But based on work done at Oak Ridge, where these new hybrid metals were being tested under the influence of radiation, researchers in Finland began running experiments and simulations using different mixtures with nickel.

High-entropy alloys appear to be much more resistant to radiation than pure alloys. To date, the labs at Oak Ridge and the University of Helsinki have just combined two, three or four elements, whereas millions of possible combinations exist.

See the report on the EUROfusion website.

Specialists from The Welding Institute (TWI) in the United Kingdom visited ITER on 18 January to deliver a workshop to over 70 attendees from across the organization.

Overviews were given on different welding, joining and inspection techniques as well as the benefits and services available to ITER as corporate members of the TWI. Details of previous case studies carried out for both the ITER Organization and the European Domestic Agency were provided to demonstrate the large portfolio of services that can be called on.

During the open discussions there was particular interest from a number of ITER divisions in the potential use of ultrasonic inspection for both thin wall pipes and thick-section plates as an alternative to radiography; auditing of potential/in-contract suppliers; and third party manufacturing process review capabilities. Follow up meetings and initiatives on these and other subjects are anticipated to address the challenging, state of the art manufacturing processes required both at suppliers and on-site to enable the construction and assembly of ITER.

--Paul Edwards, ITER mechanical engineer/blanket manifolds

The EUROfusion consortium welcomed its 30th member in January: Ukraine.

The Ukrainian signatory is the Kharkov Institute for Physics and Technology (KIPT), acting as coordinator for fusion research in seven national universities and research institutes. Fusion infrastructure in Ukraine includes two stellarators and two plasma accelerators, with particular expertise in the areas of plasma-facing components, materials, stellarator research and diagnostics.

The EUROfusion consortium coordinates work within the EUROfusion roadmap, which breaks down the path to the realization of fusion energy into specifically defined missions. Thirty research organizations and universities from 26 European countries plus Switzerland are now members; in addition about 100 Third Parties contribute to the research activities through the consortium members.

EUROfusion collaborates with the European Domestic Agency for ITER and intensively supports the ITER Organization.

Read the full story and find out more about EUROfusion and the European roadmap here.

The latest newsletter from the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak team in Germany reviews the improvements that were made in 2016 to the machine's in-vessel components and heating systems, discusses plans for the 2017 experimental campaign, and highlights the importance ASDEX operation to the achievement of Europe's Roadmap to the Realisation of Fusion Energy.

ASDEX Upgrade, in addition to contributing to the knowledge basis required to operate ITER, is focusing increasingly on issues relevent to DEMO, the next-step fusion device.

Read the December issue of the ASDEX Upgrade here.

At the EAST tokamak in China, five Italian scientists recently joined their Chinese colleagues to participate in a week-long experiment aimed at testing a voltage-driven vertical stabilization system. The successful tests, carried out in the framework of a joint ASIPP-CREATE-ENEA collaboration, were a key step on the way to MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) control of advanced tokamak configurations, capable of decoupling shape control from vertical stabilization.

The new vertical stabilization system implemented and tested on EAST is identical to the one proposed for ITER, and these first tests show that it is compatible with the installation a new ITER-like multivariable shape controller for advanced configurations.

Read more on the ASIPP website.

In 2012 the ITER Organization retained the European company DAHER to provide global transport, logistic and insurance services for the transport of components from supplier factories to the ITER site.

Since that date, DAHER has worked with all ITER Members on their transport needs, including the transport of exceptionally sized loads. The company manages all ITER logistics operations from a control room established in Marignane, France, close to the international airport that services the Marseille region.

In November 2016, the ITER Organization strengthened its ongoing relationship with DAHER with the signature of a new framework contract for the establishment and management of a central distribution centre located at the arrival port for all components shipped by sea (Fos-sur-Mer, France).

A warehouse space of 12,000 m2 has been fully refitted for ITER component storage. The central distribution centre will allow DAHER to match the rhythm of component deliveries to ITER's assembly needs.

Read the DAHER press release here.

Precise conditions are necessary to achieve fusion reactions inside of a high-temperature plasma. In addition to raising the temperature and the density in the core region of the plasma, which is confined by strong magnetic field, it is also necessary to control the edge region to prevent particles from moving in the direction of the vessel wall. 

A precise understanding of this edge region of the plasma—and accurate predictions of its behaviour—is one of the important topics of fusion research around the world.

At the National Institute of Fusion Science (NIFS) in Japan, two researchers have succeeded in running a micro-level simulation of a plasma "blob" in the edge region by using their institute's Plasma Simulator supercomputer.

By marrying the supercomputer's computational capacity with a newly developed calculation program, they were able to calculate the movement of one billion particles. Their research results advance the understanding of the behaviour of the plasma edge and improve prediction accuracy.

See the full article on EurekAlert!/AAAS.