Subscribe options

Select your newsletters:

Please enter your email address:

@

Your email address will only be used for the purpose of sending you the ITER Organization publication(s) that you have requested. ITER Organization will not transfer your email address or other personal data to any other party or use it for commercial purposes.

If you change your mind, you can easily unsubscribe by clicking the unsubscribe option at the bottom of an email you've received from ITER Organization.

For more information, see our Privacy policy.

News & Media

Latest ITER Newsline

  • Vacuum vessel repair | A portfolio

    Whether standing vertically in the Assembly Hall or lying horizontally in the former Cryostat Workshop now assigned to component repair operations, the non-conf [...]

    Read more

  • European Physical Society | ITER presents its new plans

    The new ITER baseline and its associated research plan were presented last week at the 50th annual conference of the European Physical Society Plasma Physics Di [...]

    Read more

  • Image of the week | The platform's quasi-final appearance

    Since preparation work began in 2007 on the stretch of land that was to host the 42-hectare ITER platform, regular photographic surveys have been organized to d [...]

    Read more

  • Cryopumps | Preparing for the cold tests

    Before being delivered to ITER, the torus and cryostat cryopumps are submitted to a  comprehensive series of factory acceptance tests. This is not sufficie [...]

    Read more

  • Fusion technologies | Closing a fusion schism

    Historically, inertial confinement and magnetic confinement approaches to fusion have been parallel, separate processes. The ITER Private Sector Fusion Workshop [...]

    Read more

Of Interest

See archived entries

ITER NEWSLINE -

At WEST, it's now time for proposals

On 1 February, a seminar was organized at ITER Headquarters to present the present status of WEST and launch the call for proposals. The WEST platform is open to the international fusion community. (Click to view larger version...)
On 1 February, a seminar was organized at ITER Headquarters to present the present status of WEST and launch the call for proposals. The WEST platform is open to the international fusion community.
A few hundred metres from where the ITER Tokamak Complex is rising, a fusion plasma will light up before the end of this year.
It will happen in a machine that has written some of fusion history's most brilliant pages.

Tore Supra, which began operating in 1988, was the first tokamak to be equipped with superconducting coils and to later be fitted with actively-cooled plasma-facing components. In December 2003, the CEA-Euratom installation achieved a record plasma pulse that lasted 6 minutes and 30 seconds.

Over the past three years, the near 30-year-old machine has undergone a significant overhaul. In order to serve as a test bench for ITER, Tore Supra has traded its carbon-carbon fibre (CFC) "limiter" for an ITER-like tungsten divertor.

As the construction of the WEST platform (W Environment in Steady-state Tokamak, where "W" is the chemical symbol of tungsten) approaches completion, the time has come for submitting experimental and modelling proposals for the first phase (2016-2017) of the platform's exploitation.

"We have identified and proposed high-priority research areas such as heat load pattern characterization, wall protection systems, radiofrequency heating or preparatory work for long-pulse operation," explain task force leaders Emmanuelle Tsitrone and Clarisse Bourdelle who organized a seminar at ITER Headquarters on 1 February. "The call, however, is open to innovative ideas for making the best use of WEST's specific features."

The WEST team is planning phased operation. In Phase 1, WEST will operate with a mix of actively cooled ITER-like tungsten divertor elements and inertial tungsten-coated divertor start-up elements. In this phase, full power will be available, but plasma operation will be limited in time by the inertial divertor elements (typically ~10 seconds at high power). In Phase 2, the full actively cooled ITER-like tungsten divertor will be available allowing long-pulse operation, up to 1,000 seconds.
 
The WEST project and its research plan are open to the international fusion community.

More information on the WEST call for proposals.

return to the latest published articles