Of Interest archive

The US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has completed a multiyear study of the overall status of magnetic confinement fusion research in the United States. Its recommendation? Continued US participation in the ITER Project and an unambiguous increase in funding for the domestic fusion program leading to the construction of a compact pilot plant.

The Final Report of the Committee on a Strategic Plan for Burning Plasma Research was the latest in a number of steps undertaken by policymakers in the United States to evaluate the state of domestic fusion research—including current and planned participation in international programs—and to develop a strategic plan for the future.

The final report issued in December 2018 makes two recommendations:

• The United States should remain an ITER partner as the most cost-effective way to gain experience with a burning plasma at the scale of a power plant.
• The United States should start a national program of accompanying research and technology leading to the construction of a compact pilot plant that produces electricity from fusion at the lowest possible capital cost.

See the press release for more information or to download the full report.

A new simulation tool helps scientists to understand how a tokamak would look during a fusion experiment. Research Software Engineer Alex Meakins of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) in the UK has created a series of computerized images of the JET tokamak rendered in glass with the help of CHERAB, a simulation tool that combines plasma modelling with a powerful photo-realistic ray-tracer. This technique traces the path of light through a virtual world and predicts the effects of light bouncing off objects.

CHERAB helps address a long-standing problem for fusion diagnostics—the interference of light reflection from the metal surfaces inside a tokamak's vacuum chamber with the ability to make accurate plasma measurements.

Read the full article published by CCFE here.

On 3 December, over 1,100 ITER staff, contractors, partners, families and friends celebrated the end of 2018 as a successful year for the ITER Project and its mission to create clean and safe energy for the future.

Opening the evening at the Grand Théâtre de Provence in Aix-en-Provence, ITER Director-General Bernard Bigot told the audience that "our progress is the result of hard work, creative problem-solving and strong commitment on the part of every member of the ITER Team."

The highlight of the evening was the show of the award-winning shadow dance team Die Mobilés from Germany, whose masterful play with shapes, light and music took the audience on a tour to ITER Member countries around the world and through a short history of film. With astonishing creativity and as a special surprise for the audience, the artists brought ITER to life on stage—including a depiction of a busy worksite and a Tokamak model.

See a video clip from the show here.

Registration is now open for the 10th ITER International School, which will take place in Daejeon, Korea, from 21 to 25 January 2019. The registration fee for foreign students of KRW 340,000 (equivalent to around EUR 265, VAT included) includes accommodation, lunches and dinners, and bus service between the hotel and the school.

The ITER International School aims to prepare young scientists/engineers for work in the field of nuclear fusion and in research applications associated with the ITER Project.

The 10th edition, to be held at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Daejeon, is organized around "The Physics and Technology of Power Flux Handling in Tokamaks." This subject has an interdisciplinary character: power flux handling in tokamaks is key challenge for the development of nuclear fusion, but one that can only be resolved through the integration of physics-based approaches to decrease power fluxes on the tokamak wall together with technological developments for tokamak wall components.

For more information or to register, please visit www.iterschool2019.kr.

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of China's Reform and Opening, President Xi Jinping visited the Exhibition of Achievements and explained ITER and fusion energy development in China to the other six members of the Political Bureau, the highest decision-making body in China.

Starting this week, politicians, scientists, strategists and non-governmental organizations meet in Katowice, Poland, for the 24th United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP24. ITER will present its quest for a new and clean source of energy on Thursday, 6 December, as physicist Greg de Temmerman steps into the ring to share the latest updates on the project.

Following his talk, starting at 11:00 a.m. in the Climate Action Hub amphitheatre, there will be a screening of the award-winning fusion documentary "Let there be Light."

You can see the entire talk on the COP24 website. Click on the respective agenda item on the right-hand side - the video will start after about one minute.

The stellarator fusion device Wendelstein 7-X achieved record results during its three-month experimental campaign in 2018, reports the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Greifswald, Germany.

In experiments run from July to October, operators were able to improve plasma temperatures and densities over the first campaign and achieve long discharge times of up to 100 seconds. A 30-second plasma at 6 MW was achieved with an input heating energy of 200 MJ, while at reduced power a 100-second plasma was achieved at 2 MW.

These results are "highly satisfying" and represent some of the best stellarator values to date, the press release reports. The team is now pursuing further engineering upgrades—notably the replacement of current plasma-facing components with actively water-cooled components—to enable even higher plasma energies and, ultimately, plasmas lasting 30 minutes.

Read the full report on IPP's website.

You might wonder how many people are employed by the ITER Organization. Or how the staff pool breaks down in terms of hiring category, education level, gender or age. Or even something about family profile or Member representation.

With 35 countries participating, "diversity" is perhaps the word that best characterizes human resources at ITER. Find out more about hiring statistics, staff metrics, mobility, training, performance and more in the ITER Organizaton 2017 Social Report.

All ITER publications can be downloaded from this dedicated page on the ITER website.

The fastest supercomputer in the world, Summit (launched earlier this year at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US) will be instrumental in advancing fusion studies. Choong-Seock Chang, head of the Center for Edge Physics Simulation (EPSI) at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (US), studies the complex physics at the edge of fusion plasmas by running simulations on Summit. "It enables us to do physics which we have not been able to do before," he says.

According to Chang, scientists discovered that putting more heat into the edge of a plasma eliminated impurities and calmed the plasma. The supercomputer, featuring 2700 NVIDIA Volta GPUs, runs simulations to help get an understanding at the fundamental level of how these processes function. With the help of artificial intelligence, Summit will sift through the huge amount of simulation data and select the data with "the new physics."

The ultimate goal, says Chang, is to model the entire device and "build a virtual tokamak so that we can predict and design the next fusion reactor."

See the video published by NVIDIA here.

For the ninth time, the International Standing Committee for the International Symposium on Fusion Nuclear Technology (ISFNT) has published a call for nomination for the Miya-Abdou Award. The prize honours outstanding contributions to the field of fusion nuclear technology by young nuclear scientists or engineers. Winners receive the award at the biennial gathering of the ISFNT.

The award is named after fusion experts Kenzo Miya who used to work at the University of Tokyo and Mohamed Abdou from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in recognition of their contribution to the field of fusion nuclear technology.

The ninth Miya-Abdou Award will be presented at the 14th ISFNT meeting from 22-27 September 2019 in Budapest, Hungary. The deadline for nominations is 15 May 2019.

For more information please consult ISFNT's website.

The Divertor Tokamak Test facility (DTT) is a new Italian fusion project that aims to address one of the major challenges identified in the European Fusion Roadmap: i.e., exhausting power from fusion reactors. The project is led by the Italian national Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Development (ENEA) in collaboration with all the Italian fusion community and international institutions.

"DTT will mark a significant step forward for fusion development in Europe and worldwide," stresses DTT project leader Aldo Pizzuto, "and it will help to strengthen the industry involvement in fusion technology and engineering."

The DTT facility will be located in the ENEA premises in Frascati and the first industrial procurements for its components will be launched in early 2019. A DTT Industry Day will be held on 14 December 2018 in Frascati, which will be dedicated to the presentation of the procurement strategy and schedule. Business-to-business (B2B) meetings and bilateral thematic tables will also be organized.

To register for the DTT Industry Day click here.

For more information on the Divertor Tokamak Test facility, see this website.

Another Highly Exceptional Load (HEL) passes through the six-kilometre-long channel (the Canal de Caronte) that leads from the Mediterranean into the inland sea Étang de Berre through the town of Martigues.

The load consists of four transformers—one poloidal field coil rectifier procured by China and three central solenoid converters (89 tonnes each) procured by Korea. All four are "step down transformers" that lower the 66 kV tension to a few kilovolts before the AC current is transformed into DC to be fed to the magnets. The HEL convoy will begin its land journey on Wednesday and is expected at ITER in the wee hours of Friday. Three more poloidal field coil rectifiers, stored in DAHER facility in Berre, will hit the road on Wednesday 28 November to be delivered at ITER the following Friday.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences has reported that the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) at the Institute of Plasma Physics in Hefei has achieved an electron temperature of over 100 million degrees in its core plasma during a four-month experiment carried out earlier this year in collaboration with domestic and international colleagues.

Power injection exceeded 10 MW, and plasma stored energy reached 300 kJ after scientists optimized the coupling of different heating techniques (lower hybrid wave heating, electron cyclotron wave heating, ion cyclotron resonance heating and neutral beam ion heating). The experiment utilized advanced plasma control and theory/simulation prediction.

Research at EAST on physics and technology issues under steady-state operational conditions is directly relevant to ITER. Recent experiments on plasma equilibrium and instability, confinement and transport, plasma-wall interaction, and energetic particle physics have demonstrated long-time scale, steady-state H-mode operation with good control of impurity, core/edge MHD stability, and heat exhaust using an ITER-like tungsten divertor. 

Read a detailed report here.

The UK government has pledged to provide an additional £20m in 2019-20 to the UK Atomic Energy Agency (UKAEA), the public body responsible for research into nuclear fusion and the management of the country's largest fusion research laboratory, the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE).

"We think fusion has a big role to play," said UKAEA CEO Professor Ian Chapman. "The fuels are abundant around the globe, it doesn't release greenhouse gases and it doesn't produce long-lived radioactive waste like the nuclear fission power we have today."

The 2018 Budget reaffirms the government's commitment to nuclear energy following an absence of new investments into the sector in the 2017 Budget.

According to the World Nuclear Association, nuclear power accounted for 21% of UK electricity in September this year, however "almost half" of the country's 15 reactors are expected to be decommissioned by 2025.

Read the full article  in "Power Technology" here.

Photo: The Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE).

Thirty-seven seconds might seem like a very short duration—but not for a plasma, and even less for a plasma produced by a machine that is just commencing operations.

The 37-second plasma that WEST obtained on 31 October exceeds by 7 seconds the first of five milestones ("Key Project Indicators") that were assigned to the machine on its way to final commissioning.

The good news did not come alone—the final ITER-like, actively-cooled full tungsten divertor has just been ordered. It will replace the present non-actively cooled divertor made of tungsten-covered graphite blocks and only a few actively cooled test plasma-facing units.

When this new divertor is installed, WEST will be able to produce ITER-relevant plasmas of up to 1,000 seconds.

In the third week of November, the ITER Organization will be installing the first component of the machine in the basement of the Tokamak Building.

The 10-metre, 6-tonne metal component is one segment of the magnet feeder that will relay electrical power, cryogenic fluids and instrumentation cables from outside of the machine in to poloidal field coil #4. The specific section to be installed, called a "feedthrough," will cross through the bioshield and cryostat at the lowest (B2) level of the building.

Delivered by the Chinese Domestic Agency to ITER last year, the component has undergone testing at the MIFI workshop (Magnet Infrastructure Facilities for ITER), which is operated jointly by a team from ITER and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA).

Most recently, the lifting operation was tested at MIFI using a specially designed tool delivered by the Korean Domestic Agency (picture). Next week the component will be transferred by truck to a staging area, and then lifted up into the circular assembly area and lowered to the floor.

Stay tuned for a report in the 26 November issue of the ITER Newsline on the first act of the machine installation phase.

At the Troitsk Institute for Innovative and Fusion Research (Moscow region), specialists have established a unique remote control panel that enables participation on leading fusion devices around the world.

Based on the facility's lab complex for neutron and spectroscopy diagnostics, the panel will facilitate the creation and calibration of diagnostic systems for ITER under Russian procurement scope.

The first cooperation line has been established with Europe's JET tokamak, based in Culham, UK.  

Rich Hawryluk—who was Deputy Director-General for the Administration Department at the ITER Organization from 2011 to 2013—has been appointed interim deputy director for operations of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) while an international search for a permanent operations director moves forward. 

Hawryluk will assume the position of Terry Brog, who is stepping down from his position. Brog will remain at the Laboratory for the next six months as the head of special assignments and will work on special projects for the Department of Energy and will help develop a technology transfer plan for the Laboratory. 

This is a familiar role for Hawryluk. He served as deputy director for 11 years from 1997 to 2008. Hawryluk came to PPPL in 1974 after receiving his Ph.D. in physics from MIT. During his 44-year career, he has worked on most of the major fusion experiments at PPPL. He was head of the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor, then the largest magnetic confinement facility in the United States, from 1991 to 1997. After leaving his position as deputy director, he headed PPPL's ITER and Tokamaks Department from 2009 to 2011. From 2011 to 2013, he worked at ITER in France, serving as the deputy director-general for the Administration Department of ITER.  After returning to the Laboratory in 2013, Hawryluk headed the ITER and Tokamaks Department for three years. In 2016, he became head of the NSTX-U Recovery Project and headed that effort until becoming interim Laboratory director in September 2017. 

Read more here.

The 2019 edition of the ITER Business Forum will be held in the French city of Antibes from 26 to 28 March.

Organized by Agence Iter France with the participation of the ITER Organization, the European Domestic Agency Fusion for Energy, and other Domestic Agencies, the event has three aims:

• To offer firms the opportunity to learn more about ITER business opportunities;
• To facilitate partnerships between industries within Europe and outside Europe, and;
• To foster collaboration between industry and fusion laboratories.

The 2017 event drew over 1,000 participants from 433 companies and 25 countries. Ninety-six percent confirmed that the event had allowed them "to identify potential clients, partners or subcontractors."

The website is open at this address. Registration and stand booking will be possible from mid-November on.

Five years of construction work to upgrade the spherical tokamak MAST (UK) have been brought to a close and experiments are set to begin early next year.

MAST Upgrade will contribute to the knowledge base for ITER by helping to resolve key plasma physics issues. It will be the first tokamak to trial the Super-X divertor—a novel way to exhaust heat loads from large fusion reactors, which spreads the power loads in the divertor area of the machine. Other features of the upgrade include an increase in the pulse length by a factor approaching ten, additional heating power, and better control and pumping capabilities to contain the resulting higher temperature, longer-pulse plasmas.

A ceremony was held on 18 October at the UK's Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE). See the full report here.