Of Interest archive

"A [US] fusion plant is still years away, but it is definitely getting closer."

So concludes the Editor-in-Chief of Nuclear News, the American Nuclear Society's flagship publication, in the preface to the January 2021 issue. Nuclear News dedicates more than 50 pages to fusion energy, at a time when there is an increasing groundswell of interest in fusion in the United States and coalescence around the idea of constructing a fusion pilot plant. 

Highlights include a major contribution by ITER Director-General Bernard Bigot on the role of ITER; an article on public/private partnerships as the ideal way of advancing technology; features on fusion safety and the regulatory environment; input from startups looking to commercialize fusion energy; and an editorial by US ITER Project Office Director Kathy McCarthy, Associate Laboratory Director for Fusion and Fission Energy and Science at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

See a preview of the issue, or subscribe on the American Nuclear Society's website.

The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine has released a report calling for the construction in the US of a 50-megawatt pilot fusion power plant.

At the request of the US Department of Energy (DOE), a committee of 12 scientists has written Bringing Fusion to the U.S. Grid, with the aim of providing guidance on the key goals and innovation needed to build an electricity-producing fusion power plant at lowest possible capital cost.

This is the third major US report on fusion in 24 months.

• - In 2019, the National Academies published the Final Report of the Committee on a Strategic Plan for U.S. Burning Plasma Research, recommending 1) that the US remain a partner in ITER "as the most cost-effective way to gain experience with a burning plasma at the scale of a power plant," and 2) that the US start a "national program of accompanying research and technology leading to the construction of a compact pilot plant." (Read more here.)
• - In March 2020, hundreds of scientists representing a broad range of national labs, universities, and private ventures released A Community Plan for Fusion Energy and Discovery Plasma Sciences. It offers a consensus view of the bold steps to take nationally to deliver fusion energy and advance plasma science in the United States, including maintaining participation in ITER. (See more here.)

The new publication builds on both reports.

"Fusion energy offers the prospect of addressing the nation's energy needs and contributing to the transition to a low-carbon emission electrical generation infrastructure. Technology and research results from U.S. investments in the major fusion burning plasma experiment known as ITER, coupled with a strong foundation of research funded by the Department of Energy, position the United States to begin planning for its first fusion pilot plant. Strong interest from the private sector is an additional motivating factor, as the process of decarbonizing and modernizing the nation's electric infrastructure accelerates and companies seek to lead the way."

Read the full report here.

Or view the slides from a recent webinar on the report.

The JT-60SA tokamak—just a few months from its first plasma as the updated "Super Advanced" satellite for ITER—has launched a new website.

The site features updated content and style, and aims to provide a wide audience, including students, the press, researchers and members of the general public, with information and regular status updates on JT-60SA.

Since the completion of assembly, the Japanese and European joint team is now preparing the device for first plasma, which is planned for spring 2021. Integrated commissioning is underway, including cooldown and progressive coil energization. 

Read all about it on the new JT-60SA website.

Because the mechanical and thermal properties of materials can change substantially under neutron irradiation, one of the major challenges for the demonstration of fusion electricity is to develop neutron-resistant materials.

As part of the EUROfusion Roadmap to the Realisation of Fusion Energy (here), the Belgian nuclear research lab SCK CEN tested ITER baseline structural materials like tungsten, copper and steel during a lengthy regimen of high heat and intense neutron radiation flux. Inside SCK CEN's fission research reactor BR2, the material samples spent two years facing a temperature of up to 1200 degrees Celsius in a hail of neutrons from uranium fission.

SCK CEN will now partner with other European research labs to investigate how the high speed neutrons have impacted the thermo-mechanical properties of the irradiated samples.

Read the full report on the EUROfusion website.

--Image: A basic plasma-facing unit consisting of a tungsten block and a copper cooling water pipe. Source: SCK CEN

Harnessing fusion energy will provide humankind with a virtually unlimited, clean and safe energy source. It might also open the way to a new, superfast way of exploring the solar system and beyond.

Using the power of fusion to propel rockets to velocities otherwise unattainable, and hence dramatically shortening the duration of space travel, is not a new idea: at space agencies throughout the world, nuclear fusion propulsion has been on the agenda for decades.

The latest news in the field, however, does not come from a space agency but from the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), one of the major plasma research institutions worldwide. A few years ago, Fatima Ebrahimi, a principal research physicist there, began thinking about "the similarities between a car's exhaust and the high-velocity exhaust particles created by PPPL's National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX)." During operation, she reflected, "NSTX produces magnetic bubbles called plasmoids that move at around 20 kilometres per second, which seemed to me a lot like thrust."

Ebrahimi nurtured and streamlined the concept for a few years and, in December 2020, introduced it in the Journal of Plasma Physics. The title ("An Alfvenic reconnecting plasmoid thruster"*) was rather austere but the content quite mind-boggling: according to simulations, Ebrahimi's plasma thruster could eject particles at velocities of up to 1,500 kilometres per second. All of sudden, Mars and the moon of Jupiter are appearing much closer.

Read a detailed article on the PPPL website.

*Ebrahimi, F. (2020). An Alfvenic reconnecting plasmoid thruster. Journal of Plasma Physics, 86(6), 905860614. doi:10.1017/S0022377820001476

Due to Covid-19 pandemic and related global restrictions, the Local Organizing Committee of the 28th IAEA Fusion Energy Conference (FEC2020) has decided, in collaboration with the IAEA, to hold the conference on a virtual platform with the same dates maintained, from 10- 15 May 2021.

In addition to a full program, which will be available globally in appropriate time zones for each audience, we will also ensure opportunities for sponsoring and networking. If you are a potential sponsor and interested in finding out more about these opportunities, you can contact us at sponsor@fec2020.fr. 

Consult the FEC 2020 scientific program here.

Registration opens on 1 March 2021; more information at https://fec2020.fr/.

On 22 December 2020, the Fusion Energy Forum of Japan (FEFJ) held its annual Symposium on the ITER Project and Broader Approach* activities. Featuring speakers from government, business, academia, and science, the 3.5-hour event covered fusion energy policy in Japan, progress in domestic and international fusion projects (including ITER and the Broader Approach), frontiers of research, and industrial applications.

See all speakers and presentations at this link. 

Watch the event on YouTube in Japanese or with a voiceover in English.  

* The Broader Approach activities, financed by Europe and Japan, aim to accelerate the realization of fusion energy. Find out more here.

The European Domestic Agency for ITER, Fusion for Energy, has opened a contest to reward companies for the commercial use of fusion technologies in non-fusion markets. 

Open to all European companies and organizations, the Technology Transfer Award competition aims to encourage and promote projects where a fusion technology or know-how is used or is planned to be used outside of fusion applications.

Applications will be evaluated according to the resources and efforts deployed by the candidate to achieve commercial use of the technology in a non-fusion market, as well as the socio-economic impact of the project on the market. The selected project will receive a sole prize of €10,000.

Applications are open from 18 January 2021 to 18 March 2021 at this link.

As part of its countdown to first plasma, the JT-60SA tokamak has entered the coil energization phase. Superconducting coil EF2 has been supplied with up to 1 kA of power. 

This major commissioning milestone comes after the recent completion of the cooldown of the magnet system to 4.5 K and the completion of power supply testing. In the next days the current supplied to EF2 will be gradually increased as the quench detection circuits and the power supply controllers are tuned.

JT-60SA is a collaborative project, financed and executed jointly by Europe and Japan under the Broader Approach agreement. Following a six-year upgrade program, the teams expect to begin experiments imminently.

Read more about the project here.

ITER Russia (ROSATOM) has teamed with documentary film makers to create a 38-minute feature on fusion and ITER called "On the Way to the Sun" (На пути к Солнцу). 

In 2021, the film makers will present it at leading international and domestic festivals.

You can view it free of charge on YouTube (in Russian) at this address.

From 19 to 25 November 2020, an independent expert panel reviewed EUROfusion's R&D and design work on DEMO, Europe's future demonstration fusion power plant. Following this in-depth review, the next step of the European Roadmap to Fusion Energy, the conceptual design phase, can begin.

EUROfusion is taking a staged approach to designing DEMO, with industry-standard review practices including a gate review process. Each project phase is reviewed by a panel of independent experts before the project can advance to the next phase. This allows the DEMO team to learn from the experience of ITER and guarantees that DEMO has the support and involvement of the European fusion community and the companies that will design and construct it.

Read more about the DEMO gate review on the EUROfusion website.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the European Fusion Education Network (FuseNet) are calling on fusion enthusiasts around the world to review scientific literature and online resources to find as many zero-dimensional, or independent, design parameters as possible for active fusion tokamak and stellarator experimental reactors in the IAEA's interactive Fusion Device Information System (FusDIS) database. The data collected through the challenge, which is aimed at students and young professionals with an understanding of fusion without being experts, will prove useful for simulations, modelling and design studies to advance fusion research.

The challenge is looking for submissions that include the following parameters: radii, plasma current, magnetic field strength, material composition of device wall and divertor, plasma shape, elongation and triangularity.

Participants have until 31 January 2021 to submit their answers here.

Click to see the IAEA and FuseNet announcements.

A new fusion documentary follows the efforts underway at ITER, JET, and First Light Fusion to realize "the ultimate energy solution."

Produced by Bigger Bang Communications (UK) and narrated by actor Patrick Stewart (known for his distinct voice), the 60-minute film is part of a six-part series called Engineering the Future. "A global industrial revolution is underway, driven by passionate, dedicated individuals intent on shaping a new world. A cleaner world. A greener world. Together, they are pushing engineering to its limits to create extraordinary machines that can protect our planet for the future."

The episode on fusion can be viewed on Curiosity Stream and HBO Max (paywalls).

In a paper published this month in Nature Energy, a team from the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED, Spain) offers the scientific community a "full and heterogeneous model of the ITER Tokamak" for comprehensive nuclear analyses.

"Nuclear analysis is a core discipline in support of the design, commissioning and operation of the machine. To date, it has been conducted with increasingly detailed partial models, which represented toroidal segments of the tokamak. However, the limitations of this methodology became evident as estimates of quantities relevant to design, safety and operation showed unquantifiable uncertainties, which is a risk. [...] Thanks to increasing high-performance computing capabilities and improvements in the memory management by the codes over the years, it is now feasible to take an important step forward. In this work, we present a 360° heterogeneous and detailed MCNP model of the ITER tokamak, which we call E-lite. It can be used to determine all the quantities relevant to the ITER's nuclear operations without the aforementioned uncertainties."

The main authors—Rafael Juarez, an associate professor at UNED, and Gabriel Pedroche, a PhD student in the same research team—worked closely with colleagues from ITER and the European Domestic Agency (Fusion for Energy). Key contributions came from Michael Loughlin, Eduard Polunovskiy and Yannick Le Tonqueze from the ITER Organization, and Raul Pampin and Marco Fabbri from Fusion for Energy.

Follow the link below to consult the article:

Juarez, R., Pedroche, G., Loughlin, M.J. et al. A full and heterogeneous model of the ITER tokamak for comprehensive nuclear analyses. Nat Energy (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-020-00753-x 

 See a related report by Fusion for Energy.

On Wednesday 13 January 2021, the Stellar Energy Foundation and Pegasus Fusion Strategies are co-hosting a webinar-style workshop titled "Energy, Environment, Innovation: Fusion's Promise for our Climate."

Join featured speakers Laban Coblentz, Head of Communication at ITER, and Dennis Whyte, Director of the MIT Plasma Science & Fusion Center and Hitachi American Professor of Engineering at MIT, for a thought-provoking discussion of the state of energy supply and demand today, the effort to mitigate atmospheric CO2, and the possible role of fusion energy.

Is fusion power a realistic green energy option for combating climate change? Should private sector fusion projects be given priority over large multinational projects such as ITER? Can we rely on renewables like wind and solar to avoid climate change?

The 90-minute webinar (11:30 a.m. — 1:00 p.m. US Eastern time) will be moderated by Chris Gadomski from BloombergNEF.

Update 18 January 2021: The recording of the webinar can be found at this link.

This month, the ITER community respected time-honoured Provencal traditions by installing a crèche and a Christmas tree in the lobby of ITER Headquarters. The new mayor of Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, André Gomez, and deputy-mayor in charge of communication, Elise Placé, were by Director-General Bernard Bigot's side for the tree lighting on 1 December. (The tree was offered by the village of Saint-Paul.)