In early April the Russian company Cryogenmash, located near Moscow, started a series of gasket tests for the facility that will enable the testing of the upper and equatorial port plugs before their installation in the machine—the ITER Port Plug Test Facility. According to a Procurement Arrangement signed in 2011 with the ITER Organization, the Russian Domestic Agency is responsible for the supply of four test stands (two for the ITER Organization and one each for the European and US Domestic Agencies) for the vacuum, heat and functional testing of the vacuum vessel port plugs, critical components for preventing leaks and maintaining high vacuum within the vessel. The tests at Cryogenmash were a significant milestone on the way to the final goal. Based on test results, the firm's specialists will make the final selection of the material and the technology of the gaskets. The ITER Organization representatives who were present at the gasket tests expressed their satisfaction both with the process and the results.

It's like driving a car onto a ferry. But it takes much, much longer and it's incomparably more delicate and complicated. On Friday 28 March, on a remote wharf at the southwest end of the Fos-sur-Mer industrial harbour near Marseille, the loading of the ITER mockup convoy onto a barge took more than eight hours. Progress was measured millimetre by millimetre as the weight of the 800-tonne monster trailer was gradually transferred from the solid ground to the water-borne combination of barge and pontoon. Axle line after axle line (and there are 22 double pairs of them!) the trailer and its dummy load of stacked concrete blocks were slowly driven onto the pontoon as electronic calculators adjusted the barge's ballast in real-time. Personnel from ITER logistics provider DAHER and the Compagnie Fluviale de Transport monitored every millimetre of progress as the trailer crossed onto the barge. Each time an axle line transferred its load from the ground to the barge a long pause (5-20 minutes) ensued. Balance was checked and calculators activated the filling and emptying of the ballast tanks to compensate the imperceptible, but potentially dangerous, pitching, tossing and rolling of the barge. By the time the sun had set on the wharf, the trailer had progressed approximately 40 metres and its load had been safely transferred to the barge. "This last phase is the most delicate," explained Alain Spatafora, the maritime expert commissioned by the ITER Organization and logistics provider DAHER, and Bernard Bon, DAHER head of convoy. "The centre of gravity of the trailer must now be perfectly aligned with the centre of buoyancy of the barge."   The last phase was the most delicate. The centre of gravity of the 800-tonne load must be perfectly aligned with the centre of buoyancy of the barge.¶ On board, as bubble levels were laid on the deck to verify the perfect horizontality of the barge, the crew was busy making the last adjustments. Captains and sailors of the Compagnie Fluviale de Transports (CFT) are used to transporting exceptionally heavy loads, but at 800 tonnes this one exceeded anything they had experienced. The night was falling when, in conformity with port regulations, Marseille harbour stevedores climbed on board to lash down the trailer and its load, marking the end of the operation. The barge spent the weekend in protected docking (a strong north wind was expected during the night) and on Monday afternoon, weather permitting, it is expected to leave Fos, navigate into the narrow Caronte Canal through the town of Martigues and cross the inland sea Étang de Berre. The trailer will then be unloaded at Port-de-la-Pointe on the north-western shore of the Étang, before commencing its slow progression towards the ITER site where it is expected at around 6:00 a.m. on Friday 4 April.

A big surprise awaited joggers and bikers accustomed to the quiet track that runs along the EDF canal close to the village of La Roque d'Anthéron, some 35 kilometres to the west of Aix-en-Provence. On Thursday morning, the whole width of the track was blocked by a huge vehicle loaded with hundreds of concrete blocks and guarded by two security agents.   On the second night of its progression toward the ITER site, the test convoy had not planned to stop there. But a second technical incident, following a failure in the trailer's hydraulic system the previous night, had led the organizers halt the convoy at this stop.   Prior to the departure of the convoy, Bernard Bon, DAHER head of convoy (left) and Pierre-Marie Delplanque, Agence Iter France managing director, discuss the technical incidents of the previous nights. The second incident was also related to the hydraulic system. By the time the faulty seal was identified and replaced at 2:50 a.m., three hours had elapsed leaving only a few hours before the break of day.   As the ITER convoys are allowed to drive only at night in order to limit the disturbance to the local communities the trailer was brought to a halt at 5:00 a.m., 20 kilometres before Meyrargues—its planned destination and the last stop before the ITER site.   As a consequence, the schedule had to be promptly reorganized. It was decided that the convoy would leave its improvised parking slot along the canal at 10:00 p.m. on Thursday night to reach Meyrargues, where it would park for the weekend. It is now expected on the ITER site at 6:00 a.m. on Tuesday 8 April instead of Friday 4 April as initially anticipated.   "The incidents we suffered have helped us identify what could, and should be improved," explained Bernard Bon, DAHER head of convoy. "This is precisely what such tests are for."   The 352-wheel, 800-tonne trailer is being readied for the 20 kilometre ride to Meyrargues. The convoy is now expected at the ITER site on Tuesday 8 March at 6:00 a.m. As it progressed toward Meyrargues on Thursday night, the convoy organization was also tested in a quite unexpected way. Two vehicles tried to force their way through the protective "bubble" that surrounds the convoy. Coming face to face with a sizable contingent  of Gendarmerie forces, the drivers took a sharp U-turn and sped into a residential area where they abandoned their vehicle; they were eventually apprehended by Gendarmerie motorcyclists. In the abandoned cars authorities found an abundance of wine bottles, the probable product of a burglary.   The incident delayed the convoy by 18 minutes.

Completion of a promising experimental facility at the US Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Laboratory (PPPL) could advance the development of fusion as a clean and abundant source of energy for generating electricity, according to a PPPL paper published this month in the journal IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science.   The facility, called the Quasi-Axisymmetric Stellarator Research (QUASAR) experiment, represents the first of a new class of fusion reactors based on the innovative theory of quasi-axisymmetry, which makes it possible to design a magnetic bottle that combines the advantages of the stellarator with the more widely used tokamak design. Experiments in QUASAR would test this theory. Construction of QUASAR — originally known as the National Compact Stellarator Experiment — was begun in 2004 and halted in 2008 when costs exceeded projections after some 80 percent of the machine's major components had been built or procured.   "This type of facility must have a place on the roadmap to fusion," said physicist George "Hutch" Neilson, the head of the Advanced Projects Department at PPPL.   Both stellarators and tokamaks use magnetic fields to control the hot, charged plasma gas that fuels fusion reactions. While tokamaks put electric current into the plasma to complete the magnetic confinement and hold the gas together, stellarators don't require such a current to keep the plasma bottled up. Stellarators rely instead on twisting — or 3D —magnetic fields to contain the plasma in a controlled "steady state."   Stellarator plasmas thus run little risk of disrupting — or falling apart — as can happen in tokamaks if the internal current abruptly shuts off. Developing systems to suppress or mitigate such disruptions is a challenge that builders of tokamaks like ITER must face.   Read the whole article on PPPL Princeton Journal Watch.

A six-kilometre-long channel, the Canal de Caronte, leads from the Mediterranean Gulf of Fos into the inland sea Étang de Berre. At its narrowest, along the south shore of the island that encloses the old town of Martigues, its width does not exceed 25 metres.   It is into this constricted waterway that the barge carrying the 800-tonne ITER test convoy navigated on Monday 31 March.   The barge passes the Fort de Bouc lighthouse at the entrance of the oil tanker terminal of Lavéra. Pulled by a powerful tug, followed by still another tug and a pusher-puller workboat, the barge deftly negotiated its passage through the canal and under the Martigues drawbridge, a spectacular sight that marks the entrance into Étang de Berre.   Shortly before the barge entered the channel, ITER Director-General Osamu Motojima—accompanied by Agence Iter France managing director Pierre-Marie Delplanque and Colonel Thierry Cailloz, second in command of the PACA region Gendarmerie—joined her in the Gulf of Fos aboard a Coast Guard (Gendarmerie maritime) patrol boat.   Due to unfavorable conditions (waves measuring more than one metre) the crossing had been postponed in the morning. But by 2:00 p.m. the waves had abated and the barge was able to safely reach its destination, the LyondellBasell refinery site on the opposite shore of the Étang.   Aboard the Gendarmerie Maritime patrol boat, from left to right: Agence Iter France managing director Pierre-Marie Delplanque, ITER Director-General Osamu Motojima and Colonel Thierry Cailloz, second in command of the PACA region Gendarmerie. By Tuesday afternoon, the trailer and its load had been disembarked and had reached the town of Berre. In Berre today, and in Lambesc tomorrow afternoon, Agence Iter France (the CEA agency that coordinates transport on the ITER Itinerary) has organized a "welcome station" where the public can find information on the convoys and their importance for the ITER Project.   Click to view the videos posted by the local media La Provence and Maritima-Info.  

​The ITER project is truly at the frontier of knowledge, a collective effort to explore the tantalizing future of free, clean and inexhaustible energy offered by nuclear fusion. Where the Large Hadron Collider at CERN pushes the boundaries of physics to find the origins of matter, the ITER Project seeks to give humans an endless stream of power which could have potentially game-changing consequences for the entire planet. Read the article on Euronews website.

​Director of Agence Iter France, former director of JET (2000-2006) and former head of the European Fusion Development Agreement EFDA (2006-2009), Jérôme Pamela was recently appointed co-president of Eurofusion. The new consortium, which succeeds EFDA, is the answer of the European fusion community to the new challenges of the "ITER era." It aims at streamlining the fusion programs of the European laboratories and installations in order to contribute to ITER with maximum efficiency.   "We also have to prepare for DEMO, the 'demonstration installation' that will come after ITER," explains Jérôme Pamela,  "and to train a new generation of physicists who will operate ITER and build DEMO."   Jérôme will be co-presiding Eurofusion alongside Sybille Günter, director of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, IPP Garching.   Photo © AIF - V. Paul

​Two recently published books describe the history of nuclear fusion research. Search for the Ultimate Energy Source: A history of the US Fusion Energy Program (Springer, 2013) is written by Stephen Dean, president of Fusion Power Associates, a nonprofit advocacy organization. Dean is also a former administrator of the US Department of Energy's fusion research program. Science magazine deputy news editor Daniel Clery's A Piece of the Sun: The Quest for Fusion Energy (Overlook Press, 2013), provides a more global perspective on the same subject. Physics Today reviewed both books together in March and recently caught up with the authors to discuss their respective works. Read the interview on physicstoday website.

​The European Domestic Agency, with responsibility for the construction of the 39 buildings of the ITER installation, launched its first video on YouTube four years ago. Since then, over 100,000 viewers have followed its regular postings on site progress, industry collaboration and manufacturing. Find out more here.

​An exposition on ITER is running from now until 8 June at the Cité des Sciences (Parc de la Villette, Paris). Combining different media—display panels, videos, interviews—the exposition is designed to interest a wide public, including a younger audience. See the Cité des Sciences website for more information (in French).