Of Interest archive

This month, the ITER community respected time-honoured Provencal traditions by installing a crèche and a Christmas tree in the lobby of ITER Headquarters. The new mayor of Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, André Gomez, and deputy-mayor in charge of communication, Elise Placé, were by Director-General Bernard Bigot's side for the tree lighting on 1 December. (The tree was offered by the village of Saint-Paul.)

Researchers at the Centre for Energy Research, Hungary, will test key elements of the ITER disruption mitigation system in a dedicated support laboratory.

The technology group, led by Uron Kruezi, of the ITER Disruption Mitigation Task Force has awarded a multi-year contract to the Centre for Energy Research (EK), together with several Hungarian companies, for the development of a laboratory to test key components of ITER's disruption mitigation system (DMS). The DMS will use a technique called shattered pellet injection that creates small ice fragments by shattering a single large cryogenic pellet of hydrogen and neon. These fragments will then enter the plasma to protect the in-vessel components from the large heat fluxes generated during disruptions. One of the lab's first tasks will be to study the pellet fragmentation process, and to design a pellet shattering unit that produces those fragment sizes that are most effective in mitigating disruptions.

The studies carried out under this contract are part of a wider technology program that ITER carries out with its partners. This program addresses for example the optimization of the pellet formation process, the development of an optical pellet diagnostic to measure pellet velocity and integrity, as well as technology development for accelerating the pellet towards the plasma.

Click here to see the press release issued by the Centre for Energy Research on the contract award.

--Conceptual design of the test stand to study the pellet shattering process.

The ITER Organization has kicked off its 2021 internship program with the publication of 116 offers on the ITER website (visit Jobs/Internships here: https://www.iter.org/jobs/internships).

These opportunities are geared toward undergraduate and postgraduate students, with a broad array of topics across scientific, technical and support departments. Control and data acquisition, systems engineering, business operations, construction and installation, safety and security, and science and technology are all represented in this year's batch of internship opportunities.

Positions are offered for up to six months; some categories are extendable to one year. Apply before 28 February 2021 through the online e-recruiting system. (Please note that internship opportunities are limited to nationals from countries participating in the ITER Project, i.e., China, the European Union plus Switzerland, India, Japan, Korea, Russian Federation and the United States.)

The JT-60SA fusion experiment in Naka, Japan, has entered its integrated commissioning phase—one of the last steps before first plasma. This collaborative project, financed and executed jointly by Europe and Japan under the Broader Approach agreement, will soon be running experiments to support the operation of ITER and to investigate how best to optimize the design and operation of fusion power plants built after ITER.

Preparing the newly upgraded device for its first plasma is step-by-step operation that began with the evacuation of all air from the vacuum vessel and surrounding cryostat, and was followed by the current phase of slowly cooling down the device's superconducting magnets to the temperature of 4 K (- 269 °C). This phase started on 10 October 2020 and is expected to last several weeks. (You can follow the progression of cooldown here.) 

Once the magnets reach the desired temperature, the team will heat up the vacuum vessel to 200 °C to rid it of moisture and any possible residual contaminants. Energizing the magnets come next, first each magnet separately before the full group together. The final step, before injecting hydrogen for making a plasma, is to test the electron cyclotron resonance heating.

Read more at Fusion for Energy.

The ITER Project has been selected as one of the world's most influential projects by the Project Management Institute in its 2020 ratings, released in November.

The professional organization's Top 50 list singles out "compelling efforts across industries and around the world that have achieved significant milestones" during the year. "In a time of uncertainty and upheaval, bold projects are paving the way to a new future." Each effort is "a distinct masterclass in how to navigate change and deliver results."

The ITER Project is #34 overall and #3 in the Top 10 list for projects in the domain of energy, recognized for "boldly exploring next-gen nuclear energy."

Find out more here: https://www.pmi.org/most-influential-projects.

The list of ITER Technical Reports available on the public website continues to grow.

These reports, freely downloadable, aim to make the results of scientific and technical activities carried out under the ITER Agreement widely available.

Typically, they are versions of internal reports that have been deemed of interest for the wider scientific and technical community, but that have not been submitted for conventional publication in scientific journals or books.

View the growing list here : https://www.iter.org/technical-reports

Whether in person or virtual, the world's largest fusion conference will forge ahead: FEC 2020 will be maintained for 10-15 May 2021 with the now-finalized scientific program.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), together with the Local Organizing Committee, is currently reviewing the evolving COVID-19 situation and its impact on the conference. 

A decision whether to maintain a physical conference or move to a virtual event will be taken in early 2021. You will be kept informed.

So be ready to join us at the 28th IAEA Fusion Energy Conference (FEC 2020) whatever its format, as the fusion show must go on. We look forward to seeing you there!

For more information about the conference and updates regarding the program, please visit the website.

The Governing Board of the European Domestic Agency for ITER, Fusion for Energy, announced on 29 September that it has extended the contract of the current Director, Johannes Schwemmer, through 31 December 2023. Mr. Schwemmer has led Fusion for Energy since 1 January 2016.

"This unanimous decision shows that Mr Schwemmer has the full support of the Governing Board to continue to lead Fusion for Energy," said Chair Beatrix Vierkorn-Rudolph. Massimo Garribba, Deputy Director-General of the European Commission Directorate-General for Energy and Euratom's representative to Fusion for Energy's Governing Board, "[...] looks forward to his continued dedication to this international flagship project."

Read the full news article on the Fusion for Energy website.

The international fusion community lost a major contributor when Dr. David Swain passed away last month. His contributions to the advancement of experimental and theoretical plasma physics and technology spanned more than half a century during which he produced over 150 scientific papers.

For much of his career, Swain's research focused on confining and heating high density plasmas, largely with high power radiowaves. He received his PhD in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969, after receiving a Bachelor of Science from North Carolina State University in 1963. He became a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1985.

His professional career began in 1969 at Sandia Laboratories; in 1975, he joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a member of the ORMAK tokamak team. He played a leading role in radiofrequency development activities for TFTR at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and Tore Supra in France, plus other ion cyclotron systems for devices around the world including NSTX and KSTAR. Swain was also an early and critical member of the international team that designed ITER's ion cyclotron heating system. He retired from ORNL in 2017, but continued to contribute as a consultant, helping US ITER and the ITER Organization.

In his professional and personal life, Swain possessed a generosity of spirit, good-natured friendliness, and a dry sense of humour that made it a pleasure to work and travel with him. His folksy sayings, rooted in his rural North Carolina upbringing, were legendary. The global ITER community will miss his character and his contributions.

-- US ITER and the ITER Organization

The fusion team at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has introduced a worldwide tracking and information system for fusion devices, located within the IAEA's Fusion Portal.

The Fusion Device Information System (FusDIS), developed and maintained by the IAEA, focuses on experimental fusion research devices worldwide. FusDIS contains information on fusion devices public or private that are currently in operation, under construction, closed or being planned. All information is collected by the IAEA and undergoes a process of review involving the International Fusion Research Council.

It currently lists 62 tokamaks, 12 stellarators/heliotrons, 7 laser fusion devices, and 31 innovative/alternate fusion concepts.

The IAEA fusion team is interested in feedback on FusDIS. Please send comments to: Fusion-Physics@iaea.org

From the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory:

The American Nuclear Society has bestowed its distinguished Nuclear Historic Landmark designation on the pioneering Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) that ran from 1982 to 1997 at the US Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL).

The groundbreaking facility laid the foundation for future fusion power plants and set world records for fusion power (10.7 million watts) in 1994 and total fusion energy production (1,500 million joules) from 1993 to 1997.  The achievements marked a major step in fusion history.

The designation, which will be formally announced at the American Nuclear Society's November meeting, recognizes TFTR "for demonstrating significant fusion energy production and tritium technologies for future nuclear fusion power plants and the first detailed exploration of magnetically confined deuterium-tritium fusion plasmas."

Read the full statement by The American Nuclear Society.

Read the original article on the PPPL website.

Secondary school teachers across Europe are invited to participate virtually in the 2020 European Fusion Teacher Day, hosted by FuseNet, the European Fusion Education Network.

Registration for the 2 October event closes on 27 September.

The European Fusion Teacher Day will premiere new education materials for the classroom, offer a behind-the-scenes look at international fusion experiments such as ITER, JET and GOLEM, and host a live connection with teachers throughout Europe. At the end of the event you will be able to tell your students all about nuclear fusion: from the cutting-edge research that is going on, to how to make fusion a career.

For the first part of the event, participants will join video calls in the language of their choice, hosted by fusion institutes in Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom. An introductory lecture followed by a presentation of newly developed classroom materials will be the highlights of this part of the program.

Then, all participants will tune into a livestream (in English) with fusion students and scientists located on site at three tokamak facilities: ITER, JET and GOLEM.

For more information on how to participate, see FuseNet.

On 17 September, the chiller plant in the Site Services Building was turned over to the ITER Science, Controls & Operation Department (SCOD) for commissioning.

This is the first of many handovers to come between the ITER construction and operation teams, and it signals that equipment installation is complete. Now, a commissioning team led by SCOD will start to energize the equipment, fill the pipes, and test the circuits and related control interfaces.

The chiller plant is one element of the chilled water system that is, in turn, part of the overall ITER cooling water system. The tokamak cooling water system, the component cooling water system, the chilled water system and the heat rejection system are together responsible for removing the enormous amounts of heat generated by the tokamak and its auxiliary systems.

On August 28, two upper port extensions procured by the Russian Domestic Agency arrived at the South Korean port of Busan.

Each of the vacuum vessel's 44 openings will have custom-made "extensions" to create the junction to the surrounding cryostat. The first link in the two-part chain—the port stub extension—will be welded to the vacuum vessel sectors before they are shipped from their manufacturing locations; (the second, port extensions, will be added during assembly on site).

Responsible for the 18 upper ports, the Russian Domestic Agency has been delivering upper port stub extensions to vacuum vessel manufacturers in Korea and Europe since 2017. They are procured under the general contracting responsibility of JSC NIIEFA (part of Rosatom State Corporation), and manufactured by MAN Energy Solutions, Germany.

Upper port extensions #14 and #16 were delivered to Korea late August after a one-month sea voyage. The timely delivery of all port stub extensions is critical for the on-time fabrication of vacuum vessel sectors, and thus the overall ITER schedule.

The ITER community was saddened to learn that Vladimir Sergeevich Voitsenya, a Ukrainian physicist, researcher, and Fellow of the Ukrainian Physical Society, passed away in August 2020. 

Trained as a Doctor of Science in Physics and Mathematics, he spent much of his career at the Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology, KhIPT, moving from laboratory head to leading research scientist, head of the plasma diagnostics laboratory, and finally head of the Stellarators Division. Dr Voitsenya's scientific interests included magnetic plasma confinement, plasma-surface interaction, and plasma-facing mirrors for the diagnostics in ITER.

"Vladimir was a key player in the mirror program for ITER diagnostics and indeed his work is the foundation of the current excellent progress in this area," commented Michael Walsh, Head of ITER Diagnostics. Colleagues at the International Tokamak Physics Activity (ITPA*) remember him for his enthusiasm, his visionary papers, his ideas—many of which are now implemented in ITER diagnostics—and his kind and friendly attitude. "For us he was a diagnostic pioneer, one of the founders and strongest proponents of the ITPA."

*The International Tokamak Physics Activity (ITPA) provides a framework for internationally coordinated fusion research activities.

ITER's start-of-assembly celebration on 28 July 2020 generated unprecedented media interest in the project, as evidenced by 3,500 news stories in the printed press in 41 languages (101 countries). A small sampling can be found in Press Clippings (https://www.iter.org/pressclippings). For full information about the project see the ITER website at https://www.iter.org/.

In this 16-minute feature on the ITER Project aired by the Seoul-based English language channel Arirang TV on 5 August, the head of ITER Korea, Jung Kijung, explains how South Korea joined ITER in 2003, how Korean expertise has contributed to the science and engineering that underpins the mega-science project, what in-kind components South Korea has contributed to the project, and what milestones have to be realized before the advent of fusion electricity.

Watch the segment of News, In Depth here.