ITER NEWSLINE
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European Physical Society
ITER presents its new plans
Alberto Loarte, Head of the Science Division
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 Division.
The new baseline and its associated research plan were described in a plenary talk at the conference and this description was supported by detailed scientific analysis reported in invited, oral and poster presentations from ITER staff, postdoctoral researchers, Scientist Fellows and collaborators.
The Plasma Physics Division of the European Physical Society (EPS) held its 50th annual conference from 8 to 12 July 2024 with the participation of 660 scientists from more than 40 countries. The magnificent university town of Salamanca in Spain was the chosen venue to mark this momentous anniversary, with the conference being hosted by the Spanish Centre for Pulsed Lasers in collaboration with Madrid's Polytechnic University. Salamanca's University was founded in 1218 and presently has 26 faculties/schools and over 30,000 students. It is the oldest university in Spain, also one of the oldest in Europe, and was used as the template for the first universities founded in the American continent from the 1550s onwards. The Spanish Centre for Pulsed Lasers operates a petawatt-class laser facility which is open to the Spanish and international scientific community for the application of high-power laser technologies in a wide range of fields such as physics, engineering, biology, and medicine.
This remarkable venue and important EPS anniversary provided an ideal setting for the first presentation of the new ITER baseline and Research Plan in a scientific forum after the submission of these documents to the ITER Council in June. The new baseline and its associated research plan were described in a plenary talk at the conference and this description was supported by detailed scientific analysis reported in invited, oral and poster presentations from ITER staff, postdoctoral researchers, Scientist Fellows and collaborators. The rationale and strategy for the new baseline and the detailed objectives of the research plan were presented to the EPS scientific community. The research plan includes three phases (Start of Research Operation and 1st and 2nd Deuterium-Tritium phases) that provide a scientifically sound and robust path to the demonstration of ITER's scientific and technological goals. Open R&D issues which need to be addressed in the near future in order to consolidate the details of the research plan were also presented to the EPS attendants, triggering very productive discussions with a wide range of researchers from ITER Members fusion research institutions interested in supporting the new ITER baseline and research plan.
In this EPS conference there were more than 160 papers orally presented (plenary, invited and oral presentations) and more than 400 as posters. Results of particular relevance to the new ITER baseline and research plan reported at this conference included the validation of the models to describe the transport of tungsten in the main plasma and the demonstration of power exhaust with a tungsten wall (including Edge Localized Mode control) in ASDEX Upgrade; the demonstration of high-performance long pulse H-mode operation with a tungsten wall in EAST; and the confirmation and enhancement of edge tungsten screening and deuterium-tritium fusion plasma performance at JET, to cite a few.
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