What’s New

India plans to reboot its steady state superconducting tokamak, SST-1, on time to be showcased at the upcoming IAEA Fusion Energy Conference, reports the media platform The Better India.

Commissioned at the Institute for Plasma Research in 2013, the SST-1 experiment has produced plasma discharges up to ~ 500 ms. Experiments were halted after some small damage was detected in the tokamak's toroidal magnet system in December 2017.

Organized from 22 to 27 October 2018 by the Government of India in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, the 27th IAEA Fusion Energy Conference will be one of the year's highlights for the world fusion community, providing a platform for discussions around key physics and technology issues in fusion research.

Read about SST-1 on the website of "The Better India."

Find more about the 27th IAEA Fusion Energy Conference (or pre-register online) here.

What do Anna, Margaret, Aneeqa, Natalia, Sarah, Kat and Karina have in common?

All these women are engineers who are contributing to ITER by working on exciting issues such as building the ion cyclotron antenna, designing and manufacturing the divertor, reducing the risk of beryllium exposure to future workers, or modelling material migration.

For the first time this year, the ITER community joined in to mark the International Women in Engineering Day on 23 June. You can find out more about ITER's women engineers in the Twitter feed of the ITER Women's Network.

The day was launched as a national day by the Women's Engineering Society in the United Kingdom in 2014 to celebrate its 95th anniversary. Due to a high level of  response, interest and enthusiasm, the event turned international in 2017 and received UNESCO patronage in 2016 and again in 2018.

The International Women in Engineering Day is now an international awareness campaign to raise the profile of women in engineering and related sciences. By celebrating the achievements of women in this field, the annual event seeks to inspire young women to consider a career in engineering.

Find out more here.

--Anneqa Khan is a mechanical engineer in ITER's Science Division, working on modelling material migration and fuel retention.