Of Interest archive

Europhysics News has produced a special issue on nuclear fusion and plasma physics (Volume 47/No 5-6, September-December 2016).

The issue describes the state of fusion research in Europe, how ITER fits into the long-terms goals, and plans for the demonstration reactor after ITER (DEMO).

Highlights include contributions by the head ITER Organization's Science & Operations Department, David Campbell; EUROfusion's Tonny Donné; L.D. Horton from the JET tokamak; and Thomas Klinger from the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator program.

The full issue is available for download on the Europhysics News website.

Stefan Gerhardt (left), principal research physicist and head of experimental operations on the National Spherical Torus Experiment-Upgrade (NSTX-U) at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) in the US, has won the Fusion Power Associates 2016 Excellence in Fusion Engineering Award.

The honour, given by directors of the research and educational foundation, recognizes "persons in the relatively early part of their careers who have shown both technical accomplishment and potential to become exceptionally influential leaders in the fusion field." The award was presented on 13 December at the 37th annual meeting of the Fusion Power Associates. 

The group's board of directors cited Gerhardt's "many scientific contributions," including his "recent work on predicting plasma disruptions, which will provide major benefit to ITER and other major fusion experiments, and the leadership you provided and are providing."

Read the full announcement on the PPPL website.

Even the greatest performers need rehearsals ... and JET is no exception. Scientists and engineers at the world's largest operating tokamak have been preparing for JET's next starring role — a run of tests using the high-power fuel mixture of deuterium and tritium (D-T).

The deuterium-tritium combination is the one that will be used to gain maximum fusion output in ITER and in the first fusion power stations that will follow it. JET is the only present-day fusion machine that can use tritium and therefore has a vital role in preparing for ITER operations.

As a radioactive substance, and one that is in short supply, tritium is not used very often at JET. Most research is carried out with deuterium only (the last operations with tritium were in 2003). However new campaigns of both T-T and D-T experiments are planned in 2018 and 2019 to give the best simulation yet of how fusion plasmas will perform in ITER.

The D-T rehearsal at JET during this summer and autumn aimed to simulate the operating environment for the tritium campaigns. With 13 years since the last tritium experiments, many of the systems and the people working on them have changed. The rehearsal was an ideal opportunity to test procedures for using tritium, train staff and iron out any flaws ahead of the real thing.

See video interviews on the rehearsal experience at CCFE (Culham Centre for Fusion Energy).

The FOM Institute DIFFER, in the Netherlands, is starting a large research program to investigate one of the most fundamental difficulties in designing the fusion reactors of the future—how to protect the solid vessel from the intense heat and neutron bombardment of the reaction, especially in the divertor region which "exhausts" the plasma.

The research program "Taming the Flame" is supported by strategic funding from Foundation FOM (Fundamental research On Matter).

Nine new researchers (seven PhD positions and two postdoc positions) will be recruited to work in an integrated approach together with DIFFER's existing scientific staff. 

"In a fusion power plant, even a sturdy metal wall with a high melting point will not be able to resist the plasma," says DIFFER's head of fusion research Marco de Baar. "In our research program, we want to already start managing the heat load inside the plasma, and bring the energy to the wall in a controlled way." The research will focus on controlling and diluting the plasma before it reaches the wall, and on the novel concept of a self-repairing exhaust wall, with a liquid metal layer flowing over and protecting the solid reactor wall.

A key experiment in the program is DIFFER's linear plasma generator Magnum-PSI, the only laboratory facility in the world capable of examining materials exposed to the intense plasma conditions at the walls of future fusion reactors. In addition, the team will test their research at existing fusion experiments in Germany, Switzerland and the UK.

Read the full press release on the DIFFER website.

The European Domestic Agency for ITER has awarded a contract to Equipos Nucleares SA (ENSA, Spain) for the supply of two holding tanks and two feeding tanks for ITER's water detritiation system. When manufactured and installed in the basement of the Tritium Plant, they will join six other tanks, also supplied by Europe, that were installed earlier in the year.

The water detritiation system at ITER will remove tritium from process water during plant operation and recycle it as fuel.

See the news here.

For the first time in twenty years, a tokamak will experiment with nuclear plasmas. Ian Chapman, the recently appointed UKAEA Chief Executive confirmed in a Newsline interview that "JET will be operating with tritium again in 2018, and then operating with a deuterium-tritium mix in 2019."

This video takes you into the innards of the European machine, which is presently the largest in the world.

After four years of non-stop work, the French tokamak Tore Supra has now become WEST,the tungsten (W) Environment Steady-state Tokamak. Equipped with an actively cooled tungsten divertor and additional power, experiments at WEST will provide precious data on operation in a tungsten environment in advance of ITER operation.

Considerable modification to the machine's internal elements has been carried out. New components have all been installed in the vacuum vessel (divertor coil windings, protection panels, antennas, diagnostics, tungsten plasma-facing components) and the chamber has now been closed for final commissioning before plasma operation.

The transformation mobilized more than one hundred people: staff from the Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research (CEA-IRFM) and also WEST partners, in particular Chinese and Indian on-site collaborators.

Following the upcoming divertor coil impregnation and integrated commissioning, WEST will embark on its scientific life focused on the preparation of ITER divertor operation.

Photo © Christophe Roux-CEA

More on this story in the November issue of the WEST Newsletter.

The 2015-2016 experimental campaign at the JET tokamak, Europe's flagship device, came to an end on 15 November with nearly all goals met, according to a recent article published on the EUROfusion website.

Highlights included rehearsing the procedures for future tritium-tritium and deuterium-tritium experiments; running a hydrogen campaign during which physicists learned about the dependence of plasma parameters on the mass of the hydrogen fuel used; and the high-power deuterium campaign. 

This success means that JET is right on track for the tritium-tritium and deuterium-tritium experiments planned for upcoming campaigns, which are expected to provide important results for the operation of ITER.

JET will restart operations in 2017.

Read the full article on the EUROfusion website.

The Radiation Transport Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has won a prestigious award through the US DOE Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program for radiation shielding model for ITER.

The project, titled "Safe fusion energy: predictively modeling ITER radiation shielding," has been awarded 80 million computer processor hours on the Titan Cray XK7, the most powerful supercomputer in the US for open science.

INCITE awards are given annually to projects that represent "the biggest challenges in science and engineering today, and can't be done anywhere else."

Investigators Seth Johnson, Thomas Evans, and Stephen Wilson propose a radical solution for accurately modelling ITER's shielding design at an unprecedented level of detail and scale.

Read more about the INCITE program and the 2016 winners here.

Less than one year ago, last December, the ITER Organization signed a large supply contract with W. Schulz GmbH in Germany for the procurement of piping materials. The scope covers up to 65 km (1,800 tonnes) of pipes and 43,000 units (250 tonnes) of fittings. 

The first shipment of pipes and fittings under this contract was delivered late October to the ITER worksite. It was the inaugural delivery of a broad ITER Organization-Domestic Agency program for the centralized procurement of piping materials for the component (CCWS), chilled (CHWS), and tokamak cooling water systems, expected to play out over five years.

Thirty-three tonnes of material were delivered, including 450 metres of stainless steel seamless pipes and 350 stainless steel fittings such as tees, elbows and reducers. The material will be stored in ITER's largest warehouse on site until needed for installation.

Some of the most detailed images ever of a hot plasma inside a tokamak have been captured at MAST, the spherical tokamak device at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) in the UK.

At 100,000 frames per second, the movies from the MAST device give a vivid illustration of how tokamaks keep fusion fuel trapped in a magnetic cage, with particles moving around magnetic field lines and resembling a large spinning ball of wool.

If only it were that simple; in reality, a magnetically-confined plasma is a highly complex system, and predicting how it behaves is key to making nuclear fusion a viable energy source. In particular, knowing how the hot fuel affects the cold walls of the machine is integral to ensuring that future reactors survive.

Turbulence in the magnetic field throws out wispy bunches of particles—known as filaments—from the plasma in a seemingly random fashion, ejecting fuel which touches the surfaces of the tokamak. Researchers are now working to unravel meaning within this randomness to understand this complex interaction with the machine walls, and videos such as these can give them pointers to what is happening.

Nick Walkden of CCFE's Theory & Modelling Department, who produced the videos, explains: "We believe that filaments are a vital part of the 'exhaust process' within a tokamak—how particles are expelled from the plasma. Seeing the MAST plasma at this unprecedented level of detail enables us to image individual filaments and measure their size, velocity and position within the plasma. It tells us a lot about their physics so we can find out how to predict their motion and, in future experiments, possibly learn to control them."

Read the full article at CCFE. 

Physicist Richard Hawryluk of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has been named chair of the board of editors of Nuclear Fusion.

Current head of the ITER and Tokamaks Department at PPPL and former Deputy Director-General of Administration at ITER, Hawryluk has been a member of the editorial board at Nuclear Fusion since 2009. In his new role as chair he will provide policy oversight and support to the journal's editor.

From 1991 to 1997 he headed the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) project, the only magnetic confinement fusion experiment in the US to have operated on a high-power mix of deuterium and tritium. He was also deputy director of PPPL lab from 1997 to 2009, before taking over the running of the ITER and Tokamaks Department.

Europe is responsible for the largest portion of ITER construction costs (45.6 percent); the remainder is shared equally by China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the US (9.1 percent each). 

On 24 October, six Members of the Industry, Research and Energy Committee of the European Parliament spent the day at ITER, meeting the ITER Director-General, visiting the design offices and the construction site, and exchanging with staff and contractors from the European agency for ITER, Fusion for Energy on project progress and upcoming milestones.

Read the full article on the European Domestic Agency website.

Following a four-year upgrade to double the magnetic field strength, plasma current and heating power capability of the NSTX spherical tokamak, located at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in the US, researchers reported on the first ten-week operational campaign at the recent IAEA Fusion Energy Conference in Kyoto, Japan.

Important results included increased pulse duration and maximum magnetic field strength; achievement of the optimum H-mode regime; success in reducing plasma instabilities through a second neutral beam injector; and commissioning all magnetic diagnostics.

Read the full report at PPPL.

Professor Paul Vandenplas, emeritus professor of the Royal Military Academy in Brussels, Belgium and longtime proponent of nuclear fusion, has passed away at age 84.

In the course of his illustrious career he was director of the association "EURATOM-Belgian State" for controlled nuclear fusion; acted in the role of president of the EURATOM Fusion programme committee and vice-president of its advisory committee; served on the governing board of the JET tokamak; and played a role in the site negotiations for the ITER Project. He was also the director/founder of the Laboaratory for Plasma Physics ERM/KMS

In 2014 he was honoured for his contributions to fusion research with the Minerva Prize (Förderverein Museum Jülich e.V.). Professor Vandenplas was also Grand officer of the Order of the Crown, Officer and Grand Officer of the Order of Leopold II, and Knight.

One month ago, on 30 September, the ITER Organization signed a technical Cooperation Agreement with Australia, as represented by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO). ANSTO CEO Adi Paterson had the opportunity to report on the Agreement to the Australian Parliament on 20 October. See the official recording here (Senate Economics Legislation Committee, 15:07:00).

At the Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research (DIFFER) research focuses on two major energy themes: fusion energy, and the conversion and storage of sustainable energy in solar fuels. In this first issue of the DIFFER newsletter EXPLORE, launched in October, read all about the different experiments underway.

The European Domestic Agency has published a short flyover of the ITER worksite that was filmed in early October.

Click here to see the latest progress on the Tokamak Complex and the work that is advancing on the ITER Cryoplant Building, the cooling tower area, and the Magnet Power Conversion Building area.

The 26th IAEA Fusion Energy Conference kicked off today in Kyoto, Japan.

The biennial rendezvous for fusion researchers from over 40 countries, the conference aims to highlight worldwide advances in fusion theory, experimental results, technology, engineering, safety and socio-economics.

ITER Director-General Bernard Bigot spoke on the first day, presenting the progress in ITER construction, manufacturing and R&D to an audience of scientists, engineers, policy makers, and representatives of industry.

Over 1,000 visitors are expected during the six-day event, hosted this year by the Government of Japan and organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency in cooperation with the Japanese National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS).

At the ITER stand, visitors will have the occasion to experience a virtual reality tour of the ITER construction site (Oculus Rift) and admire a Lego tokamak designed and built by students from Kyoto University.

IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano (here with ITER's Julie Marcillat) was one of the first visitors to the ITER stand on Monday 17 October.

The Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST) facility at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) in the UK is undergoing a major upgrade that, once completed, will allow it to add to the knowledge base for ITER and experiment with candidate technological solutions for future fusion power reactors.

The upgrade will permit longer pulse lengths, improved neutral beam heating, and new features to improve plasma profile control and the study of plasma instabilities.

Recently, progress on the largest sub-system—neutral beam heating—was made as the internal components were installed into two neutral beam injector vacuum vessels. The team is now on schedule to have both beamlines finished by the end of the year.

More information here: CCFE