A treasured tradition
14 May 2010
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Véronique Marfaing
As part of the curriculum of the Fusion Master course, a group of 17 students from the Barcelona School of Engineering at the Technical University of Catalunya, Spain, came to visit the French tokamak Tore Supra and the ITER construction site on Monday, 10 May.
For their teacher, Javier Dies, this annual trip to Cadarache (his eighteenth) has become "a treasured tradition." It's also the third time he's visited ITER. According to Dies, these visits "...definitely add value to the lessons I give. Seeing an operational fusion facility like Tore Supra and watching the progress of the ITER Project is worth every effort."
Following a tour around the CEA facilities guided by Alain Boulet, a technical visit of Tore Supra with Michel Chatelier, and an ITER site tour organized by Agence Iter France, Alex Martin from the ITER Tokamak Department introduced the scope and the scientific goals of the ITER Project to the group.
In the words of Yelle, a Dutch student studying applied physics at the Master's level, "this visit is a very good opportunity for us, as future engineers and researchers, to understand the major issues in the construction of a fusion facility."