Nine years before the operational campaign at ITER kicks off, some people are already thinking ahead to the final plasma shot and beyond. David Torcy, who works as a nuclear engineer in the Remote Handling & Radioactive Materials Division, is one of them. "The end of ITER's operational campaign will be followed by a 20-year decommissioning period that is divided into distinct de-activation and dismantling stages. As we design and build our systems today, it is important to think in advance about the requirements of these stages and make sure that, for our nuclear components, we plan in advance for accessibility, maintenance, removal and tooling. If we wait until the installation is complete it will be too late!" The ITER Agreement, signed in 2006, foresees 20 years of operation followed by a five-year deactivation phase that will be managed by the ITER Organization before handover to the Host state, France, for dismantling and waste disposal. The ITER Organization and the Host State will conduct decommissioning and manage dismantling waste on the basis of financing received through a decommissioning fund, provisioned during ITER operation. From the earliest days of the ITER design, in accordance with Host country regulations, the objective has been to optimize the waste management process by reducing radiotoxicity and total quantity. Selecting low-activation materials like austenitic steel, optimizing the design to limit the exposure of ex-vessel components to activation, and re-employing components or parts of components—all of these measures contribute to limiting the solid and liquid waste that will result from ITER operation. A defined reference state has been identified for the end of the de-activation period that details just how the machine must be left to France. Among the requirements is the ITER Organization's responsibility of removing and storing all tritium, vacuuming all dust, removing all activated components such as the divertor and the blanket, and removing cooling water circuits. The aim of the decommissioning forum held on 10 June was to raise awareness about issues that have to be considered now, during design and construction, in order to best prepare and plan for the future deactivation and dismantling phases of the project. On 10 June, the ITER Remote Handling & Radioactive Materials Division, Agence Iter France and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, CEA, hosted a decommissioning forum that was attended by all of the actors involved in this final ITER phase—ITER Organization managers, technical responsible officers from ITER and the Domestic Agencies, designers in charge of components inside of nuclear buildings, and Legal Affairs. The aims of the workshop were multiple: to recall the sharing of responsibilities between the ITER Organization and France, to raise awareness on decommissioning issues in the licensing process among the technical and decommissioning officers, and to present design and construction guidelines to facilitate the future deactivation and dismantling phases in accordance with French regulations. Experts were also present from international organizations such as the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (on monitoring activities) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (return-on-experience from decommissioning activities) to allow ITER to benchmark its plans against that of other facilities. "At this stage of the project, the important thing is to integrate dismantling feasibility into the design of the machine in order to facilitate handling down the road; for this reason, a member of the Safety Department and CEA experts are present during design reviews to make recommendations to the ITER Organization regarding decommissioning and raise issues whenever they arise. The final assessment of feasibility will take place at the end of ITER operation, when the operator will submit a final safety report on dismantling," explains Joelle Elbez-Uzan, head of the Environmental Protection & Nuclear Safety Division. "Over the years, due to evolutions in both the regulation and the ITER design, we have had to monitor the feasibility of the decommissioning scenario," says David. "We need to be sure that we don't just hand over the keys of the facility with no knowledge of processes for dismantling and impossible tasks to perform. The workshop helped us to clarify roles and responsibilities and make sure that our designers know what we expect from them. Moreover as we get closer to operation, the time is also right to identify possible optimizations of the scenario. This approach is in line with the general interest of fusion facilities."

The world's biggest and most advanced fusion device of the stellarator type has successfully completed its first experimental campaign. Located at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Greifswald, Germany, Wendelstein 7-X has produced approximately 2,200 plasmas since the start of operations last December, first from helium and then from hydrogen gas.   "We are more than satisfied with the results of the first experimental campaign," reports project head Thomas Klinger. From first pulses of half a second, pulse lengths of six seconds were ultimately achieved. The plasmas with the highest temperatures were produced by microwave heating of four megawatts lasting one second. At mean plasma densities, the physicists were able to measure temperatures of 100 million °C for the plasma electrons, and 10 million °C for the ions. "This greatly exceeded what our rather cautious predictions had led us to believe."   Moreover, the structure and confinement properties of the novel magnetic field proved in the first tests to be as good as expected.   Modifications in the plasma vessel are now proceeding to make the device fit for higher heating powers and longer pulses. The plasma vessel has been re-opened in order to mount 6,000 carbon tiles to protect the vessel walls and insert the divertor in order to be fit for high-power plasmas with heating powers of up to eight megawatts lasting ten seconds. See the original story on the IPP website.

It is no news that the ITER Tokamak will be large ... very large. But "large" can remain an abstraction until you are given the chance to see some of the equipment and tools that will be implemented in its construction. One of these pieces of equipment has just been assembled in the Cryostat Workshop—a circular steel frame that will support the cryostat base segments during welding operations.   The frame's diameter is 34 metres—four metres more than that of the cryostat in order to provide sufficient room for workers and welding machines. In the 44-metre wide Cryostat Workshop, the presence of such a large steel structure is overwhelming. Its sheer size dwarfs the men who were responsible for its assembly.   "We'll position the 60° segments of tier 1 on the frame and then align them using laser metrology," explains Vaibhav Joshi of ITER India. "Once tier 1 is welded, we will do the same with the 'rim' (tier 2). Welding operations will begin at the end of this month and last for about a year and a half, until the end of 2017."   The cryostat segments, manufactured by Larsen & Toubro Ltd, are part of India's in-kind procurement contributions. Indian contractor MAN Diesel & Turbo (Germany) will be in charge of welding operations. Once completed, the cryostat base section will weigh 1,250 tonnes ─ the single largest load of the machine assembly.   Still resting on its support frame, the base section will travel out of the workshop and into temporary storage on a self-propelled transport vehicle (SPMT).   Cryostat pre-assembly operations will then progress for the next sections (lower and upper cylinders) on two new frames. Once the base section is installed in its permanent position in the Tokamak Pit, its frame will be re-used for the final piece of the cryostat—the top lid.

The truck arrives in the first light of dawn on 23 June 2016. The huge step-up transformer on its bed stands out against the white of the main building of the PRIMA neutral beam test facility. Unloading begins a few hours later. The maneuvering is difficult and calls for precision; the Japanese and Italian teams check each step carefully. Tension relaxes only when the "big one" is safely set in its pit.   The 250-tonne step-up transformer is the last of a set of five to be delivered by the Japanese Domestic Agency for the power supply system of the MITICA testbed. (MITICA is a full-scale prototype of the ITER neutral beam injectors). The transformers were procured by the National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology (QST)* and manufactured by Hitachi Ltd for the 1MV voltage generator that feeds the MITICA accelerator.   "Since December 2015, the 1MV power supplies and transmission line components shipped by Japan have reached the PRIMA site from ports in Venice and Genoa. Their installation, entrusted to the Consorzio RFX laboratory that hosts the facility, is underway as scheduled," says laboratory director Roberto Piovan.   The realization of the PRIMA test facility is progressing steadily. Besides the activity for MITICA powers supplies, activities for the 1:1-scale ion source prototype, SPIDER, are also advancing quickly. "The 100 kV power supply components contributed by India arrived in April and their installation can start in parallel to the commissioning of the vacuum system and ion source power supply. The transmission line has also just been successfully tested and accepted," explains Vanni Toigo, neutral beam test facility project manager.   At the PRIMA facility in Padua, Italy, components have been arriving for the test beds SPIDER and MITICA, which will test important aspects of ITER's neutral beam heating system in advance of ITER operation. PRIMA is an important risk mitigation program for the ITER neutral beam heating system to which Europe, Japan and India are all contributing components according to Procurement Arrangements signed with the ITER Organization. Italy has offered the site, realized the complex of buildings and technical infrastructure, and set up a design and realization team as a voluntary contribution to the neutral beam development program.   "With the acceptance of the transmission line for SPIDER, the first procurement contract for PRIMA components has been completed," concludes Tullio Bonicelli, team manager from the European Domestic Agency. "This represents a concrete administrative and technical milestone that demonstrates that the realization of the facility is progressing steadily."   * QST was established on 1 April 2016 to merge the National Institute of Radiological Sciences, the Quantum Beam Directorate and the Nuclear Fusion Directorate of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA).

A delegation led by Zhao Jing, deputy head of the Chinese Domestic Agency, delivered some 40 kgs of textbooks and teaching materials to the Chinese section of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur International School on Friday 8 July.   Since its opening in September 2007, virtually all the children of ITER families and many local pupils of both European and non-European nationalities have attended the International School, which provides a bilingual curriculum. The school's pedagogical structure currently comprises six section languages (Chinese, English, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish), operating on the principle of parity (French language/section language). Furthermore, from the "collège" level (junior high school), the English speakers students can be enrolled in the English section of European teaching, where the courses are taught in English at 80%. School director Bernard Fronsacq is pictured at centre.

The call to send in proposals for the next round of EUROfusion Researcher Grants is now out. The deadline is 8 September 2016. Detailed information about eligibility and the selection procedure is available for download here. A core function of EUROfusion, which manages and funds the European research activities, is to coordinate the training and education activities for European fusion research. The aim is to invest in building a strong fusion community that will not only continue to advance fusion research but also play a vital role in the future when fusion energy is realized. EUROfusion supports PhD and pre-doctoral candidates working on fusion research and has established research and engineering grants to fund the training of fusion engineers and scientists every year. Two types of grants are offered: EUROfusion Research Grants, which support about ten post-doctoral researcher or equivalent for up to two years; and EUROfusion Engineering Grants, which provide funding for around 20 engineers for a period of three years.

The advanced technology that will be required in the pursuit of fusion energy will require the use of beryllium and other specialized, high-performance materials. A few days before the 29th Symposium on Fusion Technology (SOFT 2016) opens in Prague this year, a group of specially chosen experts from the fields of science, technology, politics, economics, and media will gather in Berlin, Germany to discuss beryllium applications at BeYOND (Beryllium Opportunities for New Developments). More information here.