The ITER Organization has released a new tool on its website—the 360° virtual tour of ITER construction.  Hosted on a powerful server and updated with new photos and drone videos four times a year, it's the next best thing to being on site. From the various schematics of the construction platform offered in the opening interface, choose your point of entry: click on a red teardrop-shaped marker to follow a drone inside the buildings, a yellow marker for a tour at ground level, or a blue marker if you prefer to stay at bird's eye view.   The views captured by drone will bring you inside the Assembly Hall, down into the lowest basement level of the Tritium Building, and closer than you than you could ever imagine to the Tokamak "pit," where the first assembly activities will get underway in 2017.   Two versions of the tool are available—the 2D version that is useful for home viewing from your computer, and the complete virtual reality immersive view that will give you the impression that you are the drone that is flying in, out and over the buildings. Designed by Emmanuel Riche of Odyssee Communication, both versions represent a leap forward in the capacity of non-local ITER stakeholders to stay in touch with worksite progress. They will also be used at ITER for engineering discussions between the ITER Organization, Domestic Agencies and suppliers, and for educational purposes.   The blue teardrops take you high above the ITER worksite. Or, for a more earthbound experience, choose the yellow (ground-level) or red (interior view) teardrops. Here are instructions for using the 2D version: Open the tool to navigate the 360-degree viewer interface. Scroll as desired to choose between site plans and a list of additional features. Each of the teardrop shapes represents a drone video. Blue corresponds to aerial videos, yellow to ground-level videos, and red to interior views. Click on a teardrop to open a drone video. Use your mouse to scroll and the (+) and (-) buttons to zoom in and out. To return to the home graphic, click on "Main Map" button in the upper right of the screen. Data sets are stored in the application for July 2016 and October 2016. Explore them both to see recent progress in ITER construction! To use the virtual reality immersive version at highest resolution and with all the best features, you will need an Oculus Rift, Playstation VR, or similar equipment. At ITER conference and exhibit stands, the Oculus Rift station has become a popular attraction and a number of Domestic Agencies and other stakeholders are considering investing in their own copy.   From this location in the Tritium Building you can scroll for a 360-degree view. But a large investment isn't necessary for your own immersive "wow" moment: any version of Google Cardboard or a similar low-tech 3D viewer will plug you into the drone videos. Just open the application from your cell phone and insert the cell phone (without casing) into the viewer. Click on the yellow viewer symbol "VR Mode."   For the price of only a few euros, you too can be the master of your own self-guided, behind-the-scenes tour of the ITER construction site. Take a closer look!   Click here to enter the 360° ITER virtual tour. There is also a permanent button on the ITER homepage.

On 14 December, at 6:03 p.m., a flash of light illuminated the vacuum vessel of WEST, the rejuvenated Tore Supra tokamak designed to serve as a test bench for ITER. This first plasma rewarded four years of hard work that involved stripping out the 30-year-old machine, adding magnetic coils to confine the originally circular plasma into a "D shape," and trading its carbon-carbon fibre (CFC) "limiter" for an ITER-like tungsten divertor.   Operators at the French Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research (IRFM) are now confident that they can move forward to the first experimental campaign, set to be launched in March 2017. The first phase of the campaign will explore heat load patterns and H mode transition; the second in October-December 2017 will focus on testing plasma-facing components under the high heat loads of ITER-grade plasmas.   On that very same day, Korea's National Fusion Research Institute (NFRI) announced that the KSTAR tokamak had achieved a record 70-second H-mode plasma. On the very same day that the IRFM team was (discreetly) celebrating WEST's first plasma, another team, at the other end of the world, also had an achievement to announce: a record 70-second H-mode plasma had just been recorded by the Korean superconducting tokamak KSTAR.   One month earlier, in mid-November, the Chinese tokamak EAST had achieved a similar but slightly shorter 60-second steady-state high energy plasma.   Read more about WEST here.

On their way down the Rhône Valley the cold boxes passed some of the most beautiful scenery of southern France: the vineyards of the Côtes du Rhône, the belfries and castles of the ancient papal city of Avignon, the Roman ruins of Arles, the wilderness of the Camargue ...   They travelled by road, sea-river vessel, barge and by road again ─ 500 kilometres in total between the Air Liquide factory near Grenoble, where the boxes were produced, and the ITER site, which they reached in the early hours of Thursday 15 December.   The three 135-tonne cold boxes are part of the ITER cryoplant, a powerful installation that will produce and circulate the ultra-cold fluids (helium and nitrogen) needed to cool the ITER superconducting magnets and other "cold systems."