The oil has been changed but the engine keeps humming along. Anyone walking along the new pedestrian pathway running between the cooling tower zone and the Tritium Building on the ITER platform wouldn't have noticed anything special. There was the same fresh asphalt, the same blue indicator signs, and the same metal protection barriers. Just another unremarkable piece of minor roadwork at ITER.  However, this project was evidence that another important ITER milestone has been reached. The overall coordination of the common areas of the ITER platform—everything from signage and emergency assembly points to parking spaces and smoking areas—had been the exclusive responsibility of the European Domestic Agency (Fusion for Energy) since the project first broke ground in 2007. Now, because key work targets have been met, ITER's Construction Management Office (CMO) is assuming responsibility for these common areas, including road works such as the new pedestrian path that opened at the end of October 2021. "This transfer of platform coordination responsibility is a significant moment for ITER," says Yves Belpomo, the Deputy Head of the Construction Management Office and Section Leader for Site Planning & Coordination (SPC). "We can consider it successful if people haven't realized it happened. It's like the oil has been changed in the engine: everything is still running smoothly, so it means we're doing our job." Miia Tiainen-Paquaux is the Construction Support Officer for the Construction Management Office. Katsumi Okayama and Yves Belpomo are Head and Deputy Head. More than three dozen people work in the ITER Construction Management Office, which provides transversal support and coordinates logistics for the site's construction activities. The role of the Construction Management Office at ITER is to provide transversal support and coordinate logistics for the site's construction activities. In 2020, the Office was reorganized and expanded to deal with the increased amount of assembly activity. The new team is led by Katsumi Okayama and it has more than three dozen staff devoted to overseeing activities such as logistics, warehousing, lifting, and scaffolding as well as overall facility management, office planning, and general on-site services such as the cafeteria. "We have a very broad mandate," says Katsumi. "We don't do the cooking, but we joke that if people are not happy with the menu, then our Office will be blamed!" The new site coordination responsibilities are an example of the Office's expanded scope. The ITER Organization had agreed with Fusion for Energy that the operational and financial responsibility for site coordination would be initiated when 75 percent of its site works contract TB16 (service trenches, precipitation drainage, and site adaptation works such as roads and lighting) was completed. This threshold was passed in September 2021; as a result, the official transfer of power began on 1 October 2021 and is expected to be completed by the end of February 2022. Not just any stretch of road: this new access way on the ITER platform was finalized through the coordination of the outgoing and incoming teams, a symbol of the larger transfer of platform coordination responsibility from Fusion for Energy to ITER. Pictured are Julien Carriere and Didier Labarthe from ENGAGE (left), and Gregory Thibault and Guillaume Merriaux Mansart from MOMENTUM (right). The transfer has been illustrative of the transversal coordination puzzles the Construction Management Office routinely needs to solve. Up until now, the logistics works in the common areas on the ITER site were under Fusion for Energy control and the day-to-day management was overseen by its Architect Engineer ENGAGE. Now, the ITER Organization is managing site coordination through its Construction Management-as-Agent MOMENTUM. This meant that hundreds of logistics work files, some in the planning stages, some in progress, had to be transferred or monitored, requiring intense cooperation between the old Fusion for Energy team from ENGAGE and the new ITER team from MOMENTUM. Specifically, the two platform coordinators—ENGAGE's Didier Labarthe and MOMENTUM's Gregory Thibault—have had to get to know each other extremely well. "We talk 10 or 15 times a day and we go to a lot of meetings," explains Gregory. "But it's all been necessary and it's a friendly process because we are taking a best-for-project approach to make sure the day-to-day operations continue smoothly." The pedestrian pathway in question and the adjoining roadway is a 10-metre x 60-metre stretch of pavement that runs east of the Tritium Building. The job involved scraping away the temporary path and road structure and then adding a 30-centimetre layer of backfill and a 20-centimetre layer of asphalt that will last for the lifetime of the ITER project. The work was done by the construction firm Valérian under the TB16 contract and with management from ENGAGE. However, because construction began after the platform coordination transfer was initiated, MOMENTUM and ENGAGE are jointly ensuring the interfaces with other contractor works and shared temporary infrastructure on the ITER platform. The pedestrian pathway opened at the end of October 2021, while the new roadway will be officially opened at the end of January 2022. "It may seem like an ordinary stretch of road, but for us, it is a strong symbol of our cooperation and the transfer as a whole," says Guillaume Merriaux Mansart, the head of transversal activities for MOMENTUM. "These types of projects may be low profile, but our team knows they play a big role at ITER."

The 11th ITER International School will be held from 25 to 29 July 2022, hosted by the U.S. Burning Plasma Organization, University of California at San Diego, and General Atomics. The subject of this year's school is "ITER Plasma Scenarios and Control" with a scientific program coordinated by Peter de Vries (ITER Organization), David Humphreys (General Atomics) and Christopher Holcomb (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory). As the start of ITER operation approaches, it is timely to address this challenging multidisciplinary topic: the development of integrated operating scenarios and required plasma control to facilitate the ITER goals, particularly for plasmas self-heated by fusion-born alpha particles. The ITER International School aims to prepare young scientists and engineers for working in the field of nuclear fusion and in research applications associated with the ITER Project. The adoption of a "school" format was a consequence of the need to prepare future scientists and engineers on a range of different subjects and to provide them with a wide overview of the interdisciplinary skills required by ITER. The first ITER School was organized in Aix-en-Provence, France, in July 2007 and focused on turbulent transport in fusion plasmas. Nine other schools followed on a variety of subjects; presentations from all schools are available on this ITER webpage. Further information on the 2022 school is available at https://iis2022.burningplasma.org/.

The European Union plays a major role in ITER. But for many in the European Parliament, the project is still an abstraction—something very large and utterly complex, founded on an arcane physics principle that offers a promise (unlimited, clean and safe energy) that seems too good to be true. Christophe Grudler, a French Member of the European Parliament (MEP) is among those who have "always believed in hydrogen fusion." Recently, he established what he calls "an informal inter-group" that brings together close to one hundred MEPs convinced that "nuclear power is a real opportunity for Europe" and determined to explore and assess its future. On Monday 31 January, Grudler led a delegation of 11 of his colleagues, hailing from nine different countries and representing four different political groups, on an in-depth visit of the ITER worksite. The group was welcomed at ITER Headquarters by Bernard Bigot, the Director-General of the ITER Organization, and by Massimo Garribba, who was present "wearing two hats"—that of Head of the ITER Council for a two-year mandate and that of Deputy Director-General of the European Commission's Directorate-General Energy.   After presentations on ITER history, progress and challenges by Bernard Bigot and Johannes Schwemmer, the Director of the European Domestic Agency Fusion for Energy, the delegation headed to the on-site coil winding facility where Europe manufactures the largest superconducting coils ever designed. Taking in the 250-metre-long facility, the workstations in succession, and the two 24-metre-in-diameter ring magnet coils that are currently going through the multi-step fabrication process, the MEPs had a first indication of the spectacular nature of the project.   ... and there's always something to point to in this unique environment. Front left, Massimo Garribba, Deputy Director-General of the European Commission's Directorate-General Energy and present Head of the ITER Council; Alain Bécoulet, ITER Head of the Engineering Domain (blue helmet); and Christophe Grudler, who led the MEP delegation to ITER. The impression was confirmed by the visit of the Assembly Hall, guided by Alain Bécoulet, ITER Head of the Engineering Domain, and Laurent Schmieder, Fusion for Energy Program Manager for Buildings, Infrastructure and Power Supplies. "Of course I had an idea of what to expect," said MEP Grudler as he stood under one of the massive vacuum vessel sectors docked vertically in one of the twin sub-assembly tools. "But I didn't anticipate seeing so many components ready to be assembled. For us parliamentarians, this is very comforting. We see the work being done, it's reassuring."   After a long pause at the edge of the Tokamak pit (and innumerable selfies), the delegation headed for the last stop in the visit: the ITER cryoplant, where David Grillot, Cryogenic Section Leader, and Nicolas Navion-Maillot, a cryogenic engineer, guided a quick visit. There are other awe-inspiring places on the ITER worksite but the coil winding facility, the Assembly Hall and adjacent Tokamak pit, and the cryoplant are emblematic of the size and scope of the project. "What we have seen and understood today will enable us to promote ITER and fusion, and to share our conviction with our colleagues in the EU Parliament," said Grudler, as the delegation prepared to board the bus at the end of the visit. "What we have seen here is European money at work."  See the press release issued after the event here.

Vacuum vessel sector #8 has left Ulsan Port, Korea. As reported in the last issue of the ITER Newsline, the Korean Domestic Agency and its supplier Hyundai Heavy Industries have completed a third 40-degree section of the ITER vacuum vessel. After passing all factory acceptance testing, Sector #8 was transferred to Ulsan Port and loaded in January. The vessel left Korea on Wednesday 26 January. It will take approximately 40 days for the vessel to reach Fos-sur-Mer, France, and and several weeks more before it can be transported by special convoy to the ITER site. Korea is supplying four sectors of the nine-sector ITER plasma chamber.  

Carlos Alejaldre, who was an ITER Organization Deputy-Director-General from 2006 to 2015 and who is the current Director-General of CIEMAT (Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas), the Spanish public research agency focused on energy and the environment, has been appointed as the new Chair of the Fusion for Energy (F4E) Governing Board. A plasma physicist by training, Carlos has held several important positions in fusion research. Prior to joining ITER, he headed CIEMAT's national fusion laboratory (1992-2004) and was for two years (2004-2006) the director general of technological policy at the Spanish ministry of Education and Science. At ITER, he was head of the Safety and Security Department. Alejaldre will act as Chair of the F4E Governing Board, the body that supervises the activities of the European Joint Undertaking for ITER and the development of fusion energy, for an initial period of two years starting on 1 January 2022.  See the F4E website for more information. 

In a rare and memorable moment, the Joint European Torus (JET) team today received His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales for a tour and first-hand discussion of fusion energy. Long known as an advocate of environmental awareness and sustainable energy, Prince Charles was, according to UKAEA CEO Ian Chapman, "keen to understand more about how fusion can be a critical piece of the future global energy puzzle." Together with European and UK officials, ITER Chief Scientist Tim Luce was present to meet the Prince of Wales and explain the JET-ITER connection. Currently the world's most powerful tokamak, JET is a direct precursor to ITER, and recently celebrated the completion of its 100,000th pulse. New scientific results from the most recent JET deuterium-tritium campaign will be released in February. During his visit, the Prince of Wales was introduced to ITER by Tim Luce, head of the ITER Science & Operations Domain (left). See the official UK government press release here.

On 17 December 2021, the Fusion Energy Forum of Japan (FEFJ) held its annual Symposium on the ITER Project and Broader Approach* activities. Featuring speakers from government, business, academia, and science, the 4.5-hour event covered fusion energy policy in Japan, progress in domestic and international fusion projects (including ITER and the Broader Approach), frontiers in research, and industrial applications. See all speakers and presentations at this link.  Watch the event on YouTube in Japanese or with a voiceover in English.   * The Broader Approach activities, financed by Europe and Japan, aim to accelerate the realization of fusion energy. Find out more here.