In those days—the late 1950s—pinch machines ruled the world of fusion. Although tokamaks were already under development in the Soviet Union, it would be more than a decade before they became the dominant form of fusion device. In the West, scientists were founding their expectations on machines such as the Perhapstron in the US or Zeta (Zero Energy Thermonuclear Assembly) in the United-Kingdom—machines that used strong magnetic fields to compress ("pinch") the plasma and, hopefully, produce fusion reactions.   Fusion research at the time was mostly national, classified and competitive. Although scientists throughout the world were eager to engage in international collaboration (as Igor Kurchatov's 1956 visit to Harwell, the Holy of Holies of Britain's nuclear research, had demonstrated), governments were reticent to open their labs and facilities.   The "Zeta fiasco," as it came to be known, was to throw into stark relief the need to pull fusion research out of secrecy.   The Zeta fiasco began with a triumphant claim and ended in utter embarrassment. What happened sixty years ago this week, at the end of January 1958, was a blow to fusion research and yet at the same time a first step towards its refoundation.   Zeta entered operation in July 1957. Its first results were highly encouraging: in previous machines plasmas had rarely lasted more than a few microseconds; in Zeta they passed the millisecond mark—a full three orders of magnitude jump and a remarkable achievement.   By August, the machine's operators had switched from hydrogen to deuterium, increasing current to 200,000 amps. Suddenly, on the evening of the 30th—bingo!  Zillions of neutrons began flooding out of the five-million-degree plasma.   Although Zeta's experiments were covered in secrecy, the news that neutron production had been observed—likely from fusion reactions—was too good to be contained. On 24 January 1958, a press conference was organized in Zeta's main hall. Four hundred media representatives attended. Zeta's experiments were still secret. But the news was too good to be contained and leaks began appearing in the press. In November, a spokesman from the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) hinted that "fusion energy [had] been achieved" and, by January, the UK government decided that it was time for a full-blown press conference.   Nobel Prize winner John Cockcroft, who headed British nuclear research and was responsible for the Zeta program, opened the conference with a cautiously worded statement: "Neutrons have been observed in about the numbers to be expected if thermonuclear reactions were proceeding," he said. However, "in no case have the neutrons been definitely proved to be due to the random motion of the deuterium associated with a temperature on the order of five million degrees ..."   Was it indeed thermonuclear fusion, or not? Had Zeta harnessed the power of the Sun? Had the UK beaten the rest of the world in the quest for unlimited energy? At Harwell, 400 howling reporters demanded to know for sure.   Pressed with questions Cockcroft eventually said that he was "90 percent certain" that Zeta's neutrons came from fusion reactions. The media needed nothing more—and the presses started rolling.   "A Sun of our own!" trumpeted the London Daily Sketch the following morning. "Unlimited fuel for millions of years," echoed the Daily Mail. Cockcroft presented what the UK scientists had achieved as "a greater achievement than Sputnik," (the artificial satellite that the USSR had launched a few months before). The world was enthralled. For the French daily Le Monde Zeta—dubbed "the magic tube"—marked the "first step in harnessing thermonuclear energy."   In the wake of the Zeta announcement in late January 1958, national pride in the UK led to the creation of a neologism: UK scientists had "sputniked" the Russians! The pin-up on the front page hinted at the "tell-nobody attitude over this stupendous discovery." The press conference at Harwell had been timed to coincide with the publication of a Nature article, which also included results (although not as spectacular as Zeta's) from the Los Alamos Perhapstron and Columbus machines. Included in the coverage, but largely unnoticed by the general media, was a note by Lyman Spitzer, the father of fusion research in the US.   Spitzer, an astrophysicist who had invented the concept of magnetic confinement and had built the first fusion machine in 1951, was highly skeptical of Zeta's results. There was a contradiction, he wrote, between the predictions of theory and the numbers reported, that suggested that "some unknown mechanism would appear to be involved." Fusion could not happen at 5 million degrees.   Others, like Lev Artsimovitch in Moscow, were more brutal in their refutation. As increasingly detailed analyses sowed more and more doubt, the Zeta triumph turned into an embarrassment.   Less than four months after the January 1958 news conference, "the H-men from Harwell"—as newspapers called the Zeta team—had to issue a corrective news release, acknowledging that the neutrons they had observed had nothing to do with the fusion of deuterium nuclei, but rather owed their existence to complex phenomena originating in plasma instabilities.   The Zeta affair dealt a severe blow to the credibility of fusion research; too many expectations and too much excitement had resulted in a huge disappointment. But there were precious lessons to be learned. One of the most important was that fusion research was doomed if it was to be pursued in the secrecy of national laboratories. Peer review, the sharing of information and doubts, and a common analysis of failures or potential successes were essential not only to the credibility of fusion research but also to its success.   One month later in Geneva, the "Second United Nations International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy" (Atoms for Peace) opened the door to such collaboration. And ten years later at the Novosibirsk fusion conference, when Lev Artsimovitch presented the exceptional results obtained in the soviet T-3 and TM-3 tokamaks (a 20-millisecond plasma at a temperature of 10 million degrees) it was a British team that was invited to do the checking and that eventually confirmed the breakthrough.   As for Zeta—for some time, the largest fusion machine in operation—it went on to have a very productive career in plasma studies. But its species belonged to an evolutionary dead end. By the late 1960s the time of the tokamak had come.  

It's a strange place—a room that could easily accommodate a three-storey building, a star-studded firmament (except these stars are all square), and tall sheets of stainless steel installed on the lower walls. In a few weeks, the floor will receive the same treatment and the place will soon shine like a mirror. Welcome to the drain tank room: 40 metres long, 15 metres wide, and 11 metres high. Located in the lowest basement level (B2) of the Tokamak Complex, the room will accommodate seven large steel containers with volumes ranging from 100 to 210 cubic metres. These water storage tanks are required for normal operation, as well as for the recovery of water from the tokamak cooling water system or the vacuum vessel pressure suppression system in accidental situations.   Like in other areas of the Tokamak Complex, the constellations on the ceiling of this room are formed by the complex arrangement of embedded plates. There are dozens of them, deeply anchored in the reinforced concrete and precisely positioned in order to anchor piping and equipment.   The steel lining on the floor and lower walls is more unusual (1). It will ensure that, in the event of a leak in one of the tanks, contaminated effluents will remain contained within the room.   The 4-millimetre thick steel sheets need to be adjusted and welded with utmost precision in order to ensure leak tightness. The workers from SEMA, the VFR contractor that is responsible for the installation of the lining, call it a "drip pan" because it acts like the tray one places under roasting meat to collect the drippings.   The lining on the walls is made of 4-millimetre-thick stainless steel sheets that measure 3 metres in height and 1.4 metres in width. Openings need to be cut into most of the sheets to allow access to the embedded plates, and all the sheets need to be adjusted and welded with utmost precision in order to ensure leak tightness. The same procedure will be used to line the 600 square metres of the floor.   Every weld will be checked individually using a number of techniques. One is both sophisticated and simple—a vacuum box containing soapy water that is applied along the weld lengths. In the case of an air leak, bubbles will form.   SEMA began installing the lining in October and the whole "drip pan" should be completed in May.   (1) Cells in the Tritium Building will also be lined with stainless steel.

For the first time, the Fusion Power Coordinating Committee has convened outside of International Energy Agency (IEA) headquarters in Paris, gathering at ITER on 24 and 25 January. Since 1975, this IEA body has piloted strategically coordinated fusion research and science. Physicist Jean Jacquinot*, the newly elected Chair, tells us about the Committee's role and its strong links to ITER. The Fusion Power Coordinating Committee (FPCC) is described as "a forum for the coordination of international science and research with regard to fusion." How does it operate?   The objective of the Fusion Power Coordinating Committee is to stimulate and rationalize R&D activities in fusion science and technology with an eye to the long term. The goal is the realization of fusion energy; the method is a step-by-step approach based on coordinated research activities that can be device-specific or cross-cutting. The Committee initiates, or promotes, R&D and cooperative experiments among participating IEA members and partner countries internationally.   Under the FPCC umbrella, for example, experiments are conducted on tokamak devices worldwide and the results are compared. This type of scaling activity is extremely valuable; in fact, it was just this type of coordinated experimentation that contributed to the dimensioning of ITER. We are continuing in this direction to support the ITER program and to plan in parallel for the steps after ITER. We don't just exchange words, but also hardware, people, and scientific results.   Why hold this year's meeting at ITER Headquarters? ITER is a key device on the road to fusion energy and the Fusion Power Coordinating Committee is marshalling fusion community resources to contribute to its success. Our role is to identify the most urgent ITER needs in terms of scientific or technological issues and see how we can support their resolution. For this, we have a tool—the IEA Technology Collaboration Programmes.   Technology Collaboration Programmes operate in different areas of IEA activity. As part of the fusion portfolio there are Programmes in eight areas: tokamak cooperation; the environmental, safety and economic aspects of fusion power; materials, fusion reactor technology; plasma-wall interactions; reversed field pinch devices; spherical tori; and the stellarator-heliotron concept. The FPCC manages these Programmes.   Physicist Jean Jacquinot, now Chair of the Fusion Power Coordinating Committee, has always had a passion for plasmas. When not working toward them during the day, he observes them at night. The ITER Organization has been a contracting party since 2012 to the Programme on tokamak cooperation (CTP-TCP), with the ITER Science & Operations Department chairing the CTP-TCP Executive Committee from 2016 to this most recent meeting. This group looks in particular at issues related to the stability of the plasma, with experimental programs for example on the prediction and control of disruptions.   How does the work of the Technology Collaboration Programmes overlap with the topical groups of the International Tokamak Physics Activity (ITPA), which operates under the auspices of ITER?   It's true that the ITPA is also a framework for internationally coordinated fusion research activities, but it focuses on science issues only. There can be overlap between the areas of focus, but we are careful to make sure there is no duplication.  You'll find that a good number of top scientists participate in both activities and that there is excellent understanding between the two groups. There is one other major difference. Participants to the FPCC Technology Collaboration Programmes actually sign formal Implementing Agreements, which establish a contractual relationship between at least two IEA member countries or contracting parties. These agreements are multilateral technology collaboration mechanisms that permit the exchange of material, the exchange of personnel, and joint experimentation.   What were the highlights from the most recent meeting?   The level of cooperation around fusion issues is quite remarkable, and it is widening. It's no exaggeration to say that the world community around fusion is expanding. Originally, participation in IEA Technology Collaboration Programmes was limited to OECD nations, but the enlargement of membership is now encouraged. We have been joined by Costa Rica and Australia, as well as non-IEA countries like China, India and Russia.   The Fusion Power Coordinating Committee met for the first time at ITER Headquarters from 24 to 25 February. Essentially all significant R&D in the tokamak fusion area is done through international collaboration: we identify issues, meet to discuss how we could respond, and then share our results.   The chairs of most Technology Collaboration Programmes were present at our most recent meeting, as well as a delegation of ITER scientists and other representatives of the members—about 30 people in all. The ITER Director-General also participated actively through a number of presentations, including one in which he identified the top ITER R&D needs. We then made detailed proposals for joint collaboration.   My role as Chair will now be to report to the Committee on Energy Research and Technology (CERT), which oversees technology forecasting and analyses, and the research, development, demonstration and deployment strategies for the IEA. Throughout the year I will keep in close contact with the Technology Collaboration Programme chairs to see how implementation is proceeding.   *Formerly Director of the Joint European Torus (JET) and Director of the French CEA's magnetic fusion research department (DRFC, today IRFM), Jean Jacquinot has been closely associated with ITER for the past quarter century. He is presently a scientific advisor to the French High Commissioner for Atomic Energy and Senior Advisor to the ITER Director-General.

Ten thousand kilometres away, in Rokkasho, Japan, the countdown has begun for the start of beam operation for the Linear IFMIF Prototype Accelerator, LIPAc. Part of a series of forward-looking fusion energy development projects carried out through the Broader Approach Agreement between Europe and Japan, LIPAc is entering its intermediate commissioning phase. At IFMIF, the International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility, the focus is on preparing for the construction of a fusion-relevant materials test facility through the engineering validation of the principal technological elements.   The assembly and commissioning of the 1:1 prototype accelerator, LIPAc, is progressing well. After producing its first proton (hydrogen) beam in 2014 at the Broader Approach site in Rokkasho, Japan, LIPAc is ready to enter a new phase. Proton and deuteron beams of will be accelerated to 5 MeV in 2018, with beam operation beginning in February.   In the future material test facility, whose location has not yet been decided, materials will be subjected to high-power impact of fusion neutrons to test their resistance.   One accelerator of deuterons (deuterium ions) at 40 MeV with a current of 125 mA in continuous wave mode will impact a flowing liquid lithium target. The interaction of the accelerated deuterons with the liquid lithium in the loop will generate neutrons similar to those produced in deuterium-tritium fusion reactions. These neutrons will in turn irradiate reduced-scale samples of material to be tested, and other experiments in specific modules.   IFMIF engineering validation and engineering design activities are co-coordinated by the European Implementing Agency of the Broader Approach Agreement (F4E) and its Japanese Implementing Agency (QST).   See the full story on the European Domestic Agency website.  

Spain and Croatia have announced they will join forces in preparation to host DONES, the DEMO Oriented Neutron Source facility. The specialized installation will help scientists to test materials in an environment of neutron irradiation similar to that of a demonstration fusion reactor (DEMO), the intermediate step from ITER to a commercial fusion reactor. A scientific collaboration framework between Japan and Europe—the Broader Approach—is helping to pave the way to DONES by validating key technological concepts. The engineering validation and engineering design activities of IFMIF (the International Fusion Materials Facility) aim at producing a detailed, complete and fully integrated engineering design of fusion-relevant neutron source by validating the continuous and stable operation of prototypes for each IFMIF subsystem. Research into materials with neutron-resistant properties is one of the key tasks laid out in the European Roadmap, Europe's guiding document to addressing the scientific and technological challenges on the way to adding fusion energy to Europe's future energy mix. It has not yet been decided where DONES will be located. For Europe, Spain and Croatia have now agreed to propose Granada, Spain, as host. Should this not be possible for technical reasons, the project would be hosted in Moslavačka Gora, Croatia. A technical group of experts from both countries that evaluated both sides declared the Granada site as fully operational and acknowledged that construction works could start immediately. Read the full article on the European Domestic Agency website.

Two months after the announcement of a £86 million government investment in the UK's nuclear fusion research program, the UK's Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) met with more than 80 industry stakeholders on 16 January in Oxford to present opportunities for the nuclear industry to get involved and secure major contracts with ITER. The government investment will support the UKAEA's plan to build a National Fusion Technology Platform at its Culham Science Centre. The platform will consist of two centres of excellence which, according to the Head of the UKAEA, Ian Chapman, would help in making commercial fusion a reality: - the Hydrogen-3 Advanced Technology (H3AT) centre to research how to process and store tritium, with a direct link to ITER's development;- and the Fusion Technology Facilities (FTF) to develop thermal hydraulic tests for components under fusion conditions.  Both centres open up opportunities for British industry. Partnering with UKAEA will support industry in preparing to bid for forthcoming multi-million-pound ITER contracts.  Read the full article on the UKAEA website here.      

While ITER takes shape, plasma physicists continue searching for answers to some rather tough questions. What causes a plasma to go from a weakly confined, turbulent state to a more defined and calmer state which is necessary for fusion to occur? Answering this question, scientists from the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, the University of California and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology join forces to simulate tokamak plasmas. With the help of a supercomputer located at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) called Titan, the research team uncovered for the first time the basic physics behind a plasma's transition into the high-confinement or H-mode. Future simulations will study the transition of a plasma into H-mode at ITER scale. An issue of crucial importance is the right balance between the core temperature of a plasma and the temperature at its edge, which will have an effect on the size of the plasma. These simulations are of unprecedented scale. Only with such high-performance computing resources such as Titan involving over 18,000 graphic processing units (GPUs) and close to 300,000 central processing units (CPUs), can problems of such great scientific complexity and importance be addressed. See the full article on the ORNL website here.