Of Interest archive

At the Srednenevsky Shipbuilding Plant in Russia, technicians have completed the winding operations for the first poloidal field double pancake—one of eight double pancakes that will be stacked to form ITER's smallest ring magnet, poloidal field coil 1 (PF1).

During the next stage in the manufacturing process, the completed pancake will be impregnated with epoxy resin. The resin hardens the glass tape that is wrapped around the conductor to bind the double pancake into a rigid assembly. Following the successful manufacturing readiness review for the technique, called vacuum-pressure impregnation, impregnation activities on the first PF1 pancake will begin in October.

ITER's poloidal field coils are fabricated from niobium-titanium superconductor, which becomes superconducting at super-low temperatures.

Of ITER's six poloidal field coils, PF1 is the first to proceed to the impregnation stage of the fabrication process, which involves winding and impregnating each double pancake before forming the final assembly.

More on the poloidal field magnets here.

Image: The winding table at the Srednenevsky Shipbuilding Plant.

Temperatures of over hundred million degrees centigrade and high energy neutrons and alpha particles that blast everything to shreds. What materials can withstand the harsh conditions in fusion reactors? TU Delft researcher Inês Carvalho set out to discover.

Follow this link to the article.

Source: Technische Universiteit Delft.

On Saturday 10 September, close to 450 participants met near ITER, in Vinon-sur-Verdon, for a number of sporting events designed to create and reinforce ties between people working on the ITER Project and neighbours from the surrounding villages. The 2016 edition of the ITER Games offered a broad choice of sporting disciplines for all levels, including football, cross-country running, mountain biking, kayaking, tennis and petanque. The competitions were followed by a bucolic lunch and an afternoon of family activities.

The last of three electrical transformers have successfully passed factory acceptance tests in China and are ready for shipment.

China is responsible for procuring ITER's pulsed power electrical network (PPEN), which will feed power to the heating and control systems during plasma pulses.

As part of the procurement package, three massive PPEN transformers (15 metres tall, 460 tonnes when completely fitted out) have been manufactured by supplier Baodin Tianwei. The first of these reached the ITER site in June 2016; now, following the successful completion of factory acceptance tests, the last two are ready for shipment.

--ITER China

For the third year in a row, representatives of the ITER Domestic Agencies of China, Japan and Korea met to report on progress in the procurement and manufacturing of ITER components and exchange on technical issues. Nearly 60 participants were present for the workshop which was held from 27 to 28 July at the Haeundae Grand Hotel in Busan, Korea.

Openings made by representatives from each government were followed by reports on manufacturing progress achieved since the last trilateral meeting, including progress on components for the ITER blanket, the divertor, the test blanket systems, magnets, the vacuum vessel and diagnostics. Focus discussions took place on forward-looking topics such as warranty after delivery, on-site installation work at ITER and the potential for further collaboration.

Participants also visited the Hyundai Heavy Industry workshop (pictured) in Ulsan, Korea, where manufacturing is underway on segments of the ITER vacuum vessel and toroidal field coil structures.

A fourth China-Japan-Korea trilateral workshop is planned next year in China.

The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has been named principal investigator for a multi-institutional project to study plasma-materials interaction on the EAST tokamak in China. The experiments will be designed to test the ability of lithium to protect the EAST walls from the hot plasma and to prevent impurities from bouncing back into the core of the plasma and halting fusion reactions.

Success could point to a method for optimizing long-running plasmas.

PPPL will use devices called flowing liquid lithium limiters and granule injectors, as well as optimization of coating techniques, to protect the plasma-facing components. PPPL has experience with applying lithium to its National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX), which has recently been upgraded, and at the Lithium Tokamak Experiment (LTX), a small, short-pulse complementary experiment at the laboratory that explores the effect of a liquid-lithium boundary on the plasma.

See the full article on the PPPL website.

--Photo of the interior of EAST vacuum vessel.

"Chirp, chirp, chirp." The familiar sound of birds is also what researchers call a wave in plasma that breaks from a single note into rapidly changing notes. This behaviour can cause heat in the form of high energy particles—or fast ions—to leak from the core of plasma inside tokamaks.

Physicists want to prevent these waves from chirping because they may cause too many fast ions to escape, cooling the plasma. As the plasma cools, the atomic nuclei in the tokamak are less likely to come together and release energy and the fusion reactions will sputter to a halt. 

"Chirping modes can be very harmful because they can steal energy from the fast ions in an extended region of the plasma," said Vinícius Duarte, a graduate student from the University of São Paulo. Duarte is at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) conducting research for his dissertation. 

Chirping modes have been studied for decades as physicists seek to understand and eliminate them. In a recent theoretical study, Duarte discovered some conditions within plasma that can make the chirping of modes more likely. A paper he is preparing on this topic explains the phenomenon and may help to optimize the design of fusion energy plants in the future. 

See the full article on the PPPL website.

Magnetic fusion energy and the plasma physics that underlies it are the topics of ambitious new books by Hutch Neilson, head of the Advanced Projects Department at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (US), and Amitava Bhattacharjee, head of the Theory Department at the Laboratory. 

The books describe where research on magnetic fusion energy comes from and where it is going, and provide a basic understanding of the physics of plasma, the fourth state of matter that makes up 99 percent of the visible universe.

The volume Magnetic Fusion Energy: From Experiments to Power Plants, edited by Neilson and published in June, introduces early career researchers to the current body of fusion work and points the way to breakthroughs still to be achieved. Bhattacharjee's book, the second edition of the text Introduction to Plasma Physics co-authored with Donald A. Gurnett of the University of Iowa, keeps pace with the fast- and ever-changing field. New topics in the book, which will be out this fall, range from tearing modes in fusion plasmas to particle acceleration by shocks to the magnetorotational instability in accretion disks that surround celestial bodies.

See the original announcement here.

The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has just released the annual edition of Quest, the laboratory's research magazine. This fourth edition highlights research underway on the recently upgraded spherical tokamak experiment NSTX-U.

Download the summer 2016 edition here.

Plasma—the hot ionized gas that fuels fusion reactions—can also create super-small particles used in everything from pharmaceuticals to tennis racquets. These nanoparticles, which measure billionths of a metre in size, can revolutionize fields from electronics to energy supply ... but scientists must first determine how best to produce them.

After more than two years of planning and construction, the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has commissioned a major new facility to explore ways to optimize plasma for the production of such particles. The collaborative facility, called the Laboratory for Plasma Nanosynthesis, is nearly three times the size of the original nanolab, which remains in operation, and launches a new era in PPPL research on plasma nanosynthesis. Experiments and simulations that could lead to new methods for creating high-quality nanomaterials at relatively low cost can now proceed at an accelerated pace.

Nanomaterials exhibit remarkable strength, flexibility and electrical conductivity. Carbon nanotubes, found in sporting goods, body armor, transistors and countless other products, are tens of thousands of times thinner than a human hair and stronger than steel on an ounce-for-ounce basis.

Plasma could serve as an ideal substance for synthesizing, or producing, nanomaterial. The new laboratory will study so-called low-temperature plasmas that are tens of thousands degrees hot, compared with fusion plasmas that are hotter than the 15-million-degree core of the sun. These low-temperature plasmas contain atoms and free-floating electrons and atomic nuclei, or ions, that can be shaped by magnetic fields to provide reliable, predictable and low-cost synthesis of tailored nanoparticles.

Read the full article at PPPL.

-- Photo: Elle Starkman/PPPL

A delegation led by Zhao Jing, deputy head of the Chinese Domestic Agency, delivered some 40 kgs of textbooks and teaching materials to the Chinese section of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur International School on Friday 8 July.  

Since its opening in September 2007, virtually all the children of ITER families and many local pupils of both European and non-European nationalities have attended the International School, which provides a bilingual curriculum. The school's pedagogical structure currently comprises six section languages (Chinese, English, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish), operating on the principle of parity (French language/section language). Furthermore, from the "collège" level (junior high school), the English speakers students can be enrolled in the English section of European teaching, where the courses are taught in English at 80%.

School director Bernard Fronsacq is pictured at centre.

The call to send in proposals for the next round of EUROfusion Researcher Grants is now out. The deadline is 8 September 2016. Detailed information about eligibility and the selection procedure is available for download here.

A core function of EUROfusion, which manages and funds the European research activities, is to coordinate the training and education activities for European fusion research. The aim is to invest in building a strong fusion community that will not only continue to advance fusion research but also play a vital role in the future when fusion energy is realized. EUROfusion supports PhD and pre-doctoral candidates working on fusion research and has established research and engineering grants to fund the training of fusion engineers and scientists every year.

Two types of grants are offered: EUROfusion Research Grants, which support about ten post-doctoral researcher or equivalent for up to two years; and EUROfusion Engineering Grants, which provide funding for around 20 engineers for a period of three years.

The advanced technology that will be required in the pursuit of fusion energy will require the use of beryllium and other specialized, high-performance materials.

A few days before the 29th Symposium on Fusion Technology (SOFT 2016) opens in Prague this year, a group of specially chosen experts from the fields of science, technology, politics, economics, and media will gather in Berlin, Germany to discuss beryllium applications at BeYOND (Beryllium Opportunities for New Developments).

More information here.

The latest edition of Fusion in Europe is now available from EUROfusion, the consortium of 29 research organization and universities from 26 European countries plus Switzerland. Updates on the operational campaigns of three European tokamaks and one stellarator, upgrades underway on fusion devices in the UK and France, news from the world of materials research and high performance computing for fusion ... all this and more can be found in the June issue.

Visit the EUROfusion website here.

Four turbines produced for ITER's liquid nitrogen (LN2) cryogenic plant have successfully passed factory acceptance testing and will be delivered to ITER this autumn.

One oil brake turbine and one turbine booster will be installed in each of the cold boxes of the LN2 plant, which is under European procurement.

The liquid nitrogen plant and auxiliary systems will cool down, process, store, transfer and recover the cryogenic fluids of the machine. Two nitrogen refrigerators will be delivered along with two 80 K helium loop boxes, warm and cold helium storage tanks, dryers, heaters and the helium purification system.

In spite of the small diameter of the turbines—not exceeding 15 cm—these tiny pieces of equipment will generate enough cooling power to keep the ITER thermal shields extremely cold. It took Air Liquide contractor Cryostar (France) eight months to complete fabrication.

Image: One turbine booster, fully assembled for factory testing.

See the original article on the European Domestic Agency website.

Latin America's first stellarator was officially inaugurated on 29 June 2016.

The small SRC-1 stellarator device was planned and built by the Plasma Laboratory for Fusion Energy and Applications, which belongs to the Costa Rica Institute of Technology (TEC) in Cartago.

The countdown for producing the first plasma was started by a high-ranking government representative from Costa Rica and the TEC President and was witnessed by guests from science and politics. Electronic congratulations had been sent by representatives of international stellarator research from Princeton (US) and IPP at Greifswald (Germany) to mark the advent of the new device.

"Our work is to serve future generations," stated Institute Director Iván Vargas. "If research like this continues to evolve, in the future this technology could be used at a power plant that would take alternative energy to our communities."

The Plasma Laboratory for Fusion Energy and Applications was founded six years ago. It covers the fields of plasma medicine, industrial plasma technology and fusion research. Work hitherto had been concentrated on the small MEDUSA-CR device (Madison Education Small Aspect ratio tokamak), which was taken over from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and on the preparation of the SCR-1 stellarator.

The investment costs for SCR-1 came to USD 500,000. The plasma vessel and modular coils were made in Costa Rica. The small device aims to attain plasma temperatures of 300,000 degrees Celsius. Latin America's first stellarator now joins the ranks of the stellarators in Australia, Germany, Japan, Spain and the USA.

Source: Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik, IPP

In June, the Budker Institute in Russia was host to two meetings on ITER diagnostics, with at least 70 international specialists attending.

The members of the Diagnostics Topical Group, ITPA (International Tokamak Physics Activity) met for the 30th time to discuss a range of internationally coordinated research areas that are important to the development of ITER and fusion diagnostic systems. Topics included progress on diagnostic mirrors, which must withstand conditions close to the high-temperature plasma; diagnostics for alpha particles; plasma wall reflections; and plasma control. In parallel, a meeting on port integration reunited several Russian organizations that are—like the Budker Institute—involved in the engineering integration of diagnostics into the ITER port plugs.

In addition to diagnostic engineering, the Budker Institute plays a key part in the development of high-tech electron equipment, research into the investigation of high-temperature plasma on first-wall materials, and the development, manufacturing, and testing of equipment for the ITER machine.

Michal Walsh, head of the Port Plugs & Diagnostics Integration Division at ITER, toured the host facilities in the company of the ITPA members. "Given the technical potential of this research centre and our successful cooperation to date, I look forward to continued cooperation in the future."

-- Alla Skovorodina, Budker Institute

Three additional ITER cryostat segments have arrived in the port of Fos-sur-Mer after a one-month voyage from India.

The 60° segments make up half of Tier 2 of the cryostat base (three other Tier 2 segments are due at a later date). The 120-tonne components have been unloaded in Fos in preparation for their delivery to the ITER site this week (weather permitting) along the ITER Itinerary.

Each 96-wheel transport trailer will carry a protected load that is just over 14 metres long and six metres wide.

In a tokamak fusion reactor, the plasma causes intense heating of the divertor, similar to that encountered by a space shuttle when it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere. The belly of the shuttle must be protected by special heat tiles. In the same way, the divertor surface is made of small tungsten tiles that are tilted at a grazing angle with respect to the plasma stream. The edges of the tiles, like the nose and wings of the shuttle, are subject to very intense heat flux...

Read more on the shaping of the plasma-facing components, and many other subjects, in issue #13 of the WEST Newsletter.

At Cadarache (south of France), the Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research (CEA/DSM/IRFM) is modifying the Tore Supra plasma facility to become a test platform open to all ITER partners. WEST stands for W (tungsten) Environment in Steady-state Tokamak. 

"The proponents of fusion power have for years been promising us a plentiful and relatively safe form of new energy. Well here, at ITER in France, they are starting to make good on that promise."

So begins the 30-minute documentary film on ITER and fusion that aired this past weekend on BBC Horizons.

Presenter Adam Shaw visits ITER in the south of France as well as labs around the world (Germany, US and Canada) to learn more about the "tantalizing possibility" of fusion and its chance at transforming the world's relationship with energy. 

From outside the UK view the program here (inside the UK, watch here).