Of Interest archive

Two EUROfusion grant programs aim to promote the education and training of a new generation of scientists and engineers in the fusion field.

EUROfusion Engineering Grants (EEG) are open to early career engineers within three years after their Master or PhD (or six years if relevant professional (industry) experience can be demonstrated). They enable selected candidates to specialize in a EUROfusion-relevant engineering topic.

EUROfusion research grants (ERG)—now renamed the EUROfusion Bernard Bigot Researcher Grants in honour of the former ITER Director-General—are attributed at postdoctoral level or equivalent to candidates who have defended their doctoral thesis in the two years preceding the submission deadline. Ten grants, for missions of up to two years, are foreseen for award every year.

Both calls are open until 13 September 2022. Applications should be submitted via one of the EUROfusion consortium members (acting as employing institute). See all details here.

See an article on the launch of the grants on the EUROfusion website here. 

Women in Fusion (WiF) is a new global platform for highlighting and encouraging the role of women in the field of fusion. This collaborative effort, driven by founding partners the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), ITER Organization, Fusion for Energy (F4E), General Atomics and EUROfusion, seeks to increase and promote the participation of women in fusion science, research, engineering and operations.

Women in Fusion was established in 2021 after a successful webinar at the Fusion Energy Conference (FEC2020). The Women in Fusion website, which will go live at around midnight CET on 18 July, creates a space for sharing experience, networking and promoting events and policies aligned with the group's mission.

Visit the website and join this week.

The ITER Organization, in collaboration with colleagues from CEA Cadarache, is deploying advanced virtual reality tools that allow users to interact with objects inside of a real-scale simulation. Immersed in a virtual 3D environment, designers can detect clashes, carry out integration studies, and assess accessibility. Join Benoit Manfreo (Tokamak Integration Technical Officer) and Chiara di Paolo (ITER Project Associate) for a tour of the many possibilities.

See the video "Going deeper and deeper into virtual reality" on the ITER YouTube channel here.

The first in-person FuseNet PhD event in three years took place from 4 to 6 July in Padova, Italy, hosted by the University of Padova and Consorzio RFX. A full roster of 131 participants from 23 countries and 44 different institutes and universities took part.

The FuseNet PhD Event is the place where European fusion PhD students meet and interact with affirmed international fusion researchers, aiming to strengthen and expand the fusion research network.

This session's participants were able to tour the Consorzio RFX facilities, including the ITER Neutral Beam Test Facility and the reversed field pinch device RFX-mod2.

See the full news story on the FuseNet website.

Produced by the Microwave & Imaging Sub-Systems group of the French multinational Thales, which provides electrical systems and services for the aerospace, defence, transportation and security markets, this video describes the company's work to design and build radio frequency and microwave sources for the ITER Project.

The mastery of vacuum, high voltage and microwave technologies is critical to creating wave-generating sources of ITER's radiowave external heating systems. The company is bringing all of its expertise to bear to build the European-sourced gyrotrons of the electron cyclotron heating system and the tetrodes of ion cyclotron heating system and contribute to "a disruptive alternative" in the 21st century energy mix.

See "Radiofrequency and Microwave Sources for Fusion Energy" on YouTube. 

The first week of June, the European Physical Society (EPS) organized the EPS Forum for the first time. The aim of the conference, which took place at the Sorbonne University in Paris, was to connect young physicists with big science and industry.

No fewer than three Nobel Prize Laureates were among the speakers—Barry Barish, Serge Haroche and John Michael Kosterlitz—to present the latest developments in the fields of quantum technology, energy science, accelerators, high-energy particle and nuclear physics. The European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel, and the Vice-President of the European Research Council, Andrzej Jajszczyk, opened the EPS Forum on the first day.

As one of the first scientific speakers, Alberto Loarte, Head of the ITER Science Division, presented the physics basis of ITER and the status of the project. The interest showed by the young audience was enormous—as the steady traffic to the joint ITER/FuseNet booth proved.

One physics student from Macedonia, still undecided about his professional future, was so interested that he boarded the fast train from Paris down to Aix-en-Provence to see ITER with his own eyes.

For more impressions from the first EPS Forum click here.

A virtual workshop organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on 11 and 12 July 2022 will bring together actors in the fusion community to discuss the commercialization of fusion energy.

What does market analysis tell us about the potential demand for fusion? What is fusion's place in the future energy mix? What steps remain to commercialization? What are the economic constraints?

Panels will also discuss recent trends in public and private investment, the enabling technologies that can accelerate deployment, and the incredibly dynamic fusion startup ecosystem. The ITER Organization's Taka Omae, Chief Strategist, will participate in Session 6 "Future Considerations" on Day 2.

Monday 20 June is the last day to register. See this page for all information.

"From a small hill in the southern French region of Provence, you can see two suns. One has been blazing for four-and-a-half billion years and is setting. The other is being built by thousands of human minds and hands, and is—far more slowly—rising. The last of the real sun's evening rays cast a magical glow over the other—an enormous construction site that could solve the biggest existential crisis in human history."

Follow journalist Boštjan Videmšek and photographer Matjaž Krivic as they take you through the science of fusion, the recent milestone at the JET tokamak, construction at ITER, and how fusion could become the "11th-hour hero" of the climate crisis.

See the article on the CNN website here.

The Second IAEA Technical Meeting on Plasma Disruptions and their Mitigation will take place at ITER Headquarters in Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France, from 19 to 22 July 2022, hosted by the Government of France through the ITER Organization. (A virtual connection will also be made available.) 

The event aims to serve as a forum to help coordinate experimental, theoretical and modelling work in the field of plasma disruptions with special emphasis on developing a solid basis for possible mitigation strategies in ITER and next generation fusion devices.

It aims to bring together junior and senior scientific fusion project leaders, plasma physicists, including theoreticians and experimentalists, and experts (researchers and engineers) in the field of plasma disruptions.

See all information at this link.

Fusion can theoretically be achieved by several combinations of light elements such as hydrogen, helium or boron. However, in the present state of technology, the only fusion within our reach at industrial level is that of deuterium (D) and tritium (T), both isotopes of hydrogen. DT fusion however has one downside—it generates highly energetic neutrons that activate and alter the structures they bombard. (The good side of fusion neutrons is that they will be used to breed tritium from lithium inside the machine).

For decades, fusion physicists have pursued what is sometimes referred to as the "Holy Grail" of fusion: the fusion combinations that involve helium-3, which, instead of generating neutrons like in DT fusion, produce highly energetic protons. Advantages: no material activation or alteration and, protons being charged particles, the possibility of direct electricity generation (they can be manipulated by electric and magnetic fields). Downside: helium-3, which abounds on the Moon (hence the renewed interest for lunar exploration) is exceedingly rare on Earth.

Now, scientists at the University of California San Diego have discovered evidence that helium-3 could be much more abundant on Earth than previously known.

Led by Benjamin Birner, a postdoctoral scholar in geosciences, the team is developing tools and measurement methods to quantify the puzzling increase of helium-3 in the atmosphere, and understand where it could be coming from.

We might not need to go to the Moon, after all, to mine the fuels for second or third-generation fusion power plants.

Read the full story on Vice website.

Pre-register before 1 June 2022 for this year's ITER International School on the topic of "ITER Plasma Scenarios and Control."

This in-person event will be held from 25 to 29 July 2022 at the University of California San Diego, hosted by the U.S. Burning Plasma Organization, the ITER Organization, UC San Diego, and General Atomics.

Most attendees will be graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, and early career faculty and research staff working in fields relevant to the ITER program. Although the agenda will focus on topics of scenarios and control, attendees are not required to be working in these subfields. All nationalities, whether representing an ITER Member or not, are welcome.

To register, see this webpage.

The virtual tour of ITER construction has been updated with 360° photos from April 2022. Enter the main ITER plant buildings, fly over the worksite, and plunge 30 metres into the ITER Tokamak pit to see what has changed since the last update in September 2021.

Accessible from the home page of the ITER website (yellow icon) or by clicking on the link below.

Click here to enter the latest 360° ITER virtual tour.

The Financial Times channel FT Rethink produces multimedia content that focuses on "the people, technology, strategies and systems moving us from an economy that is wasteful, idle, lopsided and dirty towards one that is circular, lean, inclusive and clean."

In a video published on 21 April 2022, the channel turns its lens to nuclear fusion and its "enormous potential" as an energy source.

Join host Anjana Ahuja to learn more about fusion science, recent breakthroughs in the field, and growing interest from private investors in "Making the heart of a star power the world."

Registration is open now for the 11th ITER International School. This in-person event will be held from 25 to 29 July 2022 at the University of California San Diego, hosted by the U.S. Burning Plasma Organization, the ITER Organization, UC San Diego, and General Atomics.

The subject of this year's school is "ITER Plasma Scenarios and Control." As the start of ITER operation approaches, it is timely to address this challenging multidisciplinary topic: the development of integrated operating scenarios and required plasma control to facilitate the ITER goals, particularly for plasmas self-heated by fusion-born alpha particles.

Most attendees will be graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, and early career faculty and research staff working in fields relevant to the ITER program. Although the agenda will focus on topics of scenarios and control, attendees are not required to be working in these subfields. All nationalities, whether representing an ITER Member or not, are welcome.

The ITER International School is organized regularly with the goal of giving young scientists and engineers a taste of the stimulating, multi-disciplinary and challenging field that is nuclear fusion.

For all information on the 2022 edition and to register, see this webpage.

The B1M—the world's largest, most subscribed-to video channel for construction—aims to inspire people to join the construction industry by showcasing the incredible projects and feats of engineering it delivers.

In March 2022, the team came to ITER. The result is an entertaining and educational nine-minute video that takes you into the very heart of ITER machine construction. "This is so much more than just an energy project; it's a $22 billion science experiment between a whole host of nations all coming together to try and change how we generate power on this planet," says host Fred Mills as he guides the viewer through a maze of components and tooling in the ITER Assembly Hall.

Colette Ricketts, deputy head of the ITER Project Control Office, also makes a cameo appearance to explain how the arrival of components from the ITER Members is planned and managed ... and re-planned if necessary, as when international events have an unexpected effect on manufacturing or shipping.

"It's a pretty nuclear level of project collaboration," says the B1M team. "It's kind of like building a LEGO kit ... just 10 million times more complicated."

Watch "We Went Inside the Largest Nuclear Fusion Reactor" on YouTube here.

Donato Lioce, head of ITER's Tokamak Cooling Water System Section, describes the plant system that will remove heat from the ITER machine and in-vessel components as "absolutely unique."

One of its peculiarities is the sheer volume of equipment—which is absolutely huge compared to the cooling system in a nuclear fission plant. More than 6,000 tonnes of equipment, 43 kilometres of piping, 3,000 valves, heat exchangers, pumps ... all housed over the seven levels in the Tokamak Building. Another is the fact that the system is designed not only to cool, but also to heat: the same equipment that circulates cooling water can also circulate hot water to "bake" tokamak components before plasma operation, or hot gas to "dry" components before maintenance. The cyclical nature of the ITER machine, designed for 30,000 plasma pulses, also has repercussions for the design of the tokamak cooling water system and its hundreds of clients.

Follow along as Donato describes in detail the different functionalities of the ITER tokamak cooling water system, system equipment, and the procurement effort that is underway now.

Watch the eighth episode of ITER Talks here. 

See the full ITER Talks playlist on YouTube here.

On Monday 28 March 2022, the Chinese Embassy in France organized a ceremony in honour of the two French laureates of the 2020 China International Science and Technology Cooperation Award. Eight international scientists had been named during the National Science and Technology Award Conference held in Beijing in November 2021; due to the pandemic, the prize ceremonies are being organized by Chinese embassies.

Fusion expert Alain Bécoulet and French hematologist Jacques Caen received their awards from the hands of Ambassador Lu Shaye.

Alain Bécoulet is former director of the Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research (IRFM), part of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), and current Head of the ITER Engineering Domain. In the course of his career, he helped to develop scientific collaboration between the Chinese and European fusion communities, particulary between the WEST project that he headed at IRFM and China's EAST tokamak. He has been a frequent visitor to the country, making more than 30 trips and developing "warm and confident relationships." HE expressed his "honour, pride and joy" at receiving the prize during his acceptance speech in Paris. 

The International Science and Technology Cooperation Award was initiated by China's State Council in 1994, and is conferred on foreign individuals or organizations that have made important contribution to China's science and technology development.

During the 30th Symposium on Fusion Engineering (SOFE 2023, 9-14 July 2023), the Fusion Technology Awards for 2022 and 2023 will be presented to individuals who have distinguished themselves through innovation in all fusion approaches that have shown significant promise or progress in the design of reactors or in the understanding of fusion plasmas.

The awards each consist of a USD 3,000 cash prize and a plaque. The nomination package should be sent to the Fusion Technology Committee Awards Chair, Dr. Carl Pawley (drcpawley@ieee.org), and it should consist of a letter describing the technical contributions on which the nomination is recommended and a current resume of the candidate. Other supporting endorsements are encouraged.

The nomination deadline for the 2022 and 2023 Fusion Technology Awards is 8 April 2022.

For more detailed information on eligibility, basis for judging, the nomination process or a list of past award recipients, please visit the IEEE-NPSS website and go to the "Fusion Technology Awards" section.

The 2022 Big Science Business Forum is the "one-stop meeting point" in Europe between Big Science and industry.

Scheduled from 4 to 7 October 2022 as an in-person event in Granada, Spain, the forum will feature the procurement and technology transfer opportunities of eleven prominent European Big Science research facilities in the areas of astrophysics, space, synchrotrons, high-energy accelerators and fusion. The European Domestic Agency for ITER, Fusion for Energy, is one of the founding members of the Big Science Business Forum. Some speakers from the ITER Organization will also be present at the event.

Business opportunities worth EUR 37 million (for the period 2022-2026) will be presented. More than 1,000 participants from 500 companies and organizations across Europe are expected. 

A specific "Technology Transfer track" will provide research entities and companies at the forum with the means to share and seek technologies that have potential cross-market applications, either in Big Science or in other markets.

Opportunities to get involved in the IFMIF-DONES materials research facility, a key step on the European Roadmap to Fusion Energy that is planned for construction in Granada, Spain, will also be highlighted.

A special event dedicated to "Women in Big Science" is scheduled on Day 1.

See all information at this address.

The European Fusion Education Network FuseNet has released a new 30-minute video on fusion energy. In "The Easiest Thing Nature Does," the viewer is introduced to the whats, whys, and hows of fusion by some of the very people who are working on the ground in Europe to make fusion energy a reality.

Meet researchers from CIEMAT (Spain), the Max Planck Institute for Fusion Energy (Germany), the ITER Organization, and York University (United Kingdom). Hear from members of the UKAEA/JET tokamak team, including a mechatronics engineer, a plasma spectroscopist, a senior operations manager, and a diagnostics project engineer. Learn about tokamaks, stellarators and the current dynamism of the private fusion sector. And drop by ITER, where construction is underway on the world's largest fusion device.

It's an exciting time for those involved in fusion worldwide, and it's a sector that is recruiting. "The Easiest Thing Nature Does" lists the many types of skills that are needed and invites you to get involved!

See the video on this FuseNet page or on YouTube.