It's been a long road and we haven't reached our destination yet. But on its way to operation, ITER has just passed a significant milestone: according to the stringent metrics that measure project performance, 50 percent of the "total construction work scope through First Plasma" is now complete. The performance metrics used in ITER assign a relative weight to every activity category within the project. Design, for instance, accounts for 24 percent; buildings construction and manufacturing for 48 percent; assembly and installation for 20 percent.   After having compounded the percentage of completion of each category, the metrics produce a figure for the totality of the work scope through the launch of operations ("First Plasma"). Design, which accounts for approximately one-fourth of the scope, is now close to 95 percent complete; manufacturing and building, which represents almost half of the total activities is close to 53 percent complete. Do a little math and the result is clear: in terms of activities that need to be completed, ITER is now halfway to its first operational event.   The passing of this milestone reflects "the collective contribution and commitment of ITER's seven Members," writes Director-General Bernard Bigot in a top-level communication to officials in the governments of the participating nations.   The reaction of the world media to the passing of this highly symbolic milestone was unprecedented: close to 600 publications, from a total of 41 countries, hailed the accomplishment. Global news agencies, newspapers and magazines (from the Guardian in the UK to Times of India), radio stations in the Czech Republic and Germany, and countless web sites in the United States, India, the United Arab Emirates, the Philippines or Australia ... all stressed the importance of what is at stake in ITER.   See a selection of articles here. Read the Statement sent by the Director-General to all ITER Members (in English or in French).   Read the full press release in English or in French.  

Keeping the governments and policy makers of the ITER Members informed on the project's progress and challenges is an essential part of the Director-General's mission. Last week, ITER Director-General Bernard Bigot was in the US for government-level meetings. Notably, he met with the Department of Energy's new Undersecretary for Science Paul Dabbar; Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Conrad Tribble; White House Energy Advisor George Dave Banks—as well as with Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Ranking Member of the US Senate Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development (Committee on Appropriations).   The Director-General was also able to attend the annual meeting of Fusion Power Associates, a non-profit research and educational foundation that aims to provide timely information on the status of fusion development and other applications of plasma science and fusion research.   Stephen O. Dean, President, presented Bernard Bigot with the Leadership Award for his performance in leading "the most challenging project in the history of the world fusion effort and especially for the management and political skills you are bringing to this historic international venture."

It's big, round and red and represents the latest addition to the collection of cranes operating on the ITER construction site. On Friday 8 December, two powerful mobile platforms slid under the 360-tonne circular beam, lifted it a few metres, and drove it slowly into the Poloidal Field Coils Winding Facility.   At the northern end of the building, four hydraulic towers, sitting on rails, were waiting for their load. Together, towers and beam will form a 30-metre-in-diameter gantry crane, travelling on rails and capable of handling, in a perfectly balanced manner, the heaviest of the ring-shaped coils throughout the last stages of fabrication.   The yellow spreader beam in the foreground, with a lifting capacity of 40 tonnes, will handle the individual "double pancakes." Once the double pancakes are assembled into a coil, they will be manipulated throughout the last stages of fabrication by the red gantry crane. The European Domestic Agency is manufacturing ITER's four largest poloidal field coils in this facility. They range in weight from 200 to 400 tonnes, and measure 17 to 24 metres in diameter. (More information here.)   The crane was designed and manufactured by the Spanish company ALE Heavylift, with the steel structure produced near Madrid and the hydraulic and electrical parts in the Netherlands. Approximately six months of work were necessary to assemble the beams from the first crane components delivered to the ITER site in June, and to install the rails and the hydraulic towers inside the building.

The Japanese Domestic Agency has successfully completed the procurement of 43 kilometres (700 tonnes) of niobium-tin cable-in-conduit superconductor for ITER's central solenoid magnet. The central solenoid is tower-shaped magnet in the centre of the machine that will induce a powerful current in the ITER plasma and maintain it during long plasma pulses. Thirteen metres tall (18 metres, with structure), four metres wide and one thousand tonnes, the central solenoid is made of six independent coil packs wound from niobium-tin superconductor.   The Japanese Domestic Agency for ITER is responsible for supplying 100 percent of the central solenoid conductors. Eight years after the Procurement Arrangement was signed with the ITER Organization, the full scope has been achieved.   Forty-nine unit lengths of superconductor have now been shipped to the United States, where coil manufacturing is underway at General Atomics (San Diego, California) under the procurement responsibility of the US Domestic Agency.   The ITER central solenoid will top the charts as the largest solenoid ever built for a fusion device. Maximum field of 13 tesla will be reached in the centre of the central solenoid for a current of 40 kA (up to a maximum of 46 kA in some modules).   Superconductors such as these—successfully developed to reach such demanding technical specifications—can also be expected to have applications in the fields of superconducting power transmission, systems for electricity storage, and the miniaturization of medical accelerators.   Read the press release in Japanese on the QST website (National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology).        

  At Consorzio RFX in Padua, Italy—home to the ITER Neutral Beam Test Facility—assembly and installation activities for the SPIDER* test bed are progressing well.   SPIDER will help engineers to finalize the development of the ion sources required for ITER's two neutral beam injectors, powerful devices that will inject a total of 33 MW of heating power into the ITER plasma. A second testbed, MITICA, will test and optimize the full prototype 1 MV injector, including beam source, accelerator, and beamline components.   In an important industrial milestone, a European consortium involving Thales Electron Devices SA (France), CECOM Srl (Italy), Galvano-T GmbH (Germany), and E. Zanon SpA (Italy) has manufactured and delivered the SPIDER beam source—a component weighing about 5 tonnes and measuring 3 x 3 x 2 metres. The beam source will be installed in a large vacuum vessel with the help of a sophisticated handling tool—components that were also developed as part of the same contract issued by the European Domestic Agency.   _Img2_This is the first full-scale ITER ion source, capable of running pulses of up to 3600 seconds at maximum power with hydrogen or deuterium. The 6 MW generated by this beam source in one hour are equivalent to the energy required by roughly 1,000 medium-sized apartments in one day. As a matter of comparison, it is twice as big as the largest existing beam source, ELISE, operating at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, in Garching, Germany, as part of a wider step-by-step effort to develop the heating system that will contribute to bringing the plasma of the ITER test reactor to a temperature of many million degrees. ITER's neutral beams are based on the acceleration and subsequent neutralization of negative deuterium (D-) ions; although neutral beams are routinely used in tokamak devices as the "workhorses" of auxiliary heating, ITER's will be the first high-energy beams at 1MV based on a negative ion source.   *SPIDER = Source for Production of Ion of Deuterium Extracted from Radio Frequency plasma   See the full report, plus a video clip of component assembly, on the European Domestic Agency website. On SPIDER, one of two testbeds at the ITER Neutral Beam Test Facility, the negative ion source for ITER's heating neutral beam system will be demonstrated at full project specifications. With the recent arrival of a component procured by the European Domestic Agency—the beam source—the test bed is that much closer to completion and operation.   At Consorzio RFX in Padua, Italy—home to the ITER Neutral Beam Test Facility—assembly and installation activities for the SPIDER* test bed are progressing well.   SPIDER will help engineers to finalize the development of the ion sources required for ITER's two neutral beam injectors, powerful devices that will inject a total of 33 MW of heating power into the ITER plasma. A second testbed, MITICA, will test and optimize the full prototype 1 MV injector, including beam source, accelerator, and beamline components.   In an important industrial milestone, a European consortium involving Thales Electron Devices SA (France), CECOM Srl (Italy), Galvano-T GmbH (Germany), and E. Zanon SpA (Italy) has manufactured and delivered the SPIDER beam source—a component weighing about 5 tonnes and measuring 3 x 3 x 2 metres. The beam source will be installed in a large vacuum vessel with the help of a sophisticated handling tool—components that were also developed as part of the same contract issued by the European Domestic Agency.   Representatives of the European Domestic Agency, Thales and RFX Consorzio pose in front of the SPIDER beam source, which was delivered late October. The testbed is scheduled to begin operating in April 2018. ©Thales This is the first full-scale ITER ion source, capable of running pulses of up to 3600 seconds at maximum power with hydrogen or deuterium. The 6 MW generated by this beam source in one hour are equivalent to the energy required by roughly 1,000 medium-sized apartments in one day. As a matter of comparison, it is twice as big as the largest existing beam source, ELISE, operating at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, in Garching, Germany, as part of a wider step-by-step effort to develop the heating system that will contribute to bringing the plasma of the ITER test reactor to a temperature of many million degrees. ITER's neutral beams are based on the acceleration and subsequent neutralization of negative deuterium (D-) ions; although neutral beams are routinely used in tokamak devices as the "workhorses" of auxiliary heating, ITER's will be the first high-energy beams at 1MV based on a negative ion source.   *SPIDER = Source for Production of Ion of Deuterium Extracted from Radio Frequency plasma   See the full report, plus a video clip of component assembly, on the European Domestic Agency website.

The starting shot for the 2018 SOFT Innovation Prize has sounded. The prize is a feature of the Symposium on Fusion Technology (SOFT), a biennial conference organized by the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA). It rewards outstanding researchers or companies who find new physics or technology solutions to address the challenges of fusion, with the potential of wider application. The competition is open to researchers, research teams and companies from around the world. Anyone interested to enter the competition needs to apply through the Research and Innovation portal of the European Commission; the deadline for submissions is 8 March 2018. An independent jury of experts in technology transfer will select the three winners and the award ceremony will take place as part of the 30th SOFT conference taking place in Giardini Naxos, Sicily, Italy, from 17-21 September. Last year's winners were awarded the prize for a novel type of high temperature superconductor cable based on REBCO tape material, a new membrane technology to produce ultra-pure hydrogen and a new virtual reality software technology to improve radioprotection. SOFT is an important conference in the area of fusion technology and research in Europe. It attracts over 800 scientists, engineers, industry representatives and exhibitors from around the world. Read the full article here.