The posters advertising the International Film Festival had not yet been taken down when another international crowd took over the avant-garde Kursaal congress centre located in the Basque city of San Sebastián last Monday. For the twenty-eighth time, scientists, engineers, manufacturers and students from all around the world were convening for the Symposium on Fusion Technology (SOFT), organized this year by the Spanish Research Centre for Energy, Environment and Technology (CIEMAT). With over 1,000 participants, SOFT once again proved to be one of the most important platforms for the exchange of information on the design, construction and operation of fusion experiments and future fusion power plants. The range of oral presentations spanned from the latest updates on the ITER Project and the Japanese tokamak JT-60SA (currently being upgraded to support ITER operation) to the latest developments on tritium breeding concepts, materials research and power plant technology. Representatives from the new EUROfusion consortium, to be officially launched this week, presented the first conceptual design ideas for a European DEMO machine with some novel approaches in the areas of magnet design and the blanket technology. More than 180 posters were on show every day, allowing participants to form a broad view of the current status of fusion research as well as learn more on related topics such as biomass fusion hybrid reactors, the energy balance of helium 3 lunar mining, and Italian-Russian cooperation within the compact tokamak project, Ignitor. During a special ITER Industrial Infoday, ITER Director-General Osamu Motojima stressed the importance of industrial involvement in the development of fusion power. During a special ITER Industrial Infoday, ITER Director-General Osamu Motojima stressed the importance of industrial involvement in the development of fusion power. Henrik Bindslev, director of ITER's European Domestic Agency Fusion for Energy, followed up by sketching out the European technology procurements planned beyond 2016. "ITER is one of the biggest scientific experiments in history," emphasized Luisa Poncela, secretary general for Science, Technology and Innovation within the Spanish government. "And Spanish industry is very proud to participate to this endeavour." More than 100 contracts, valued at over EUR 500 million, have been signed with Spanish companies so far.   During this latest SOFT, which ran from 29 September to 3 October, the European Prize for Innovation in Fusion Research was awarded for the first time by the European Commission. The first recipients were the German researchers Christian Day and Thomas Giegerich from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), based on their novel fuel cycle concept called KALPUREX (short for: Karlsruhe liquid metal based pumping process for fusion reactor exhaust gases). The next SOFT conference will take place from 5-9 September 2016 in the capital of the Czech Republic, Prague (www.SOFT2016.eu).

On a hot day in July, two surveyors made their way down the metal stairs leading to the Tokamak Complex construction site carrying precision laser measurement equipment. It was the day before pouring was scheduled for the floor of the drain tank room (part of the Tokamak Building basement, this room will house five large tanks for ITER's cooling water system). In an area adjacent to the northern wall, a survey to control the dimensions had been requested to verify the position and elevation of the 80 embedded steel plates used to anchor the tanks. It was the first task of a metrology framework contract signed by the ITER Organization in January 2014. Concluded for an initial duration of four years, the contract is extendable up to 10 years to cover later assembly phases. Following a worldwide tender, three consortia were chosen (G2Métric & Arkadia; Metromecánica & Technitop; PES (UK) Ltd & Setis Groupe Degaud); each will compete for specific jobs through Task Requests made by the ITER Organization metrology team. David Wilson, alignment and metrology responsible officer at ITER, explains:  "Controlling the interfaces between the building and the principal Tokamak components is vitally important to ensuring the successful construction of the Tokamak and its associated plant systems. By definition, these 'cast in concrete' items are immovable; therefore, problems will arise if they do not meet the specified tolerances. The philosophy a carpenter goes by—measure twice and cut once—holds true for all metrology activities and supports a rigorous quality regime." The surveys were carried out over two visits to coincide with the two phases of concrete pouring and were in addition to those carried out independently by the building contractor—providing the vital double check. All of the survey results were communicated to the ITER Buildings & Site Infrastructure team who, together with the European Domestic Agency, were then confidently able to authorize the pouring of the concrete. A repeat survey will be carried out when the concrete is fully set. The Tokamak Complex will have 83,000 embedded plates on completion; some (3.6 percent) will have very special requirements.  Systems such as the cryogenic magnet feeders and the cryostat all have very challenging alignment requirements and, just as for the drain tanks, the accurate position of the steel plates embedded in the building concrete has an important role to play. Many more metrology measurements will be required over the coming years as construction proceeds. In parallel with civil construction activities, Tokamak components are being manufactured all over the world. These huge items require even more exacting tolerances to be met to ensure that they can be assembled together and function to design parameters. Metrology requirements are currently being assessed with the departments responsible for the design of the Tokamak so as to ensure that resources are available when needed. "We have now left the design stage and are in construction," says David. "From a metrology perspective this means developing, qualifying and documenting processes for the multitude of systems requiring alignment and dimensional control. Our selected industrial partners will support this evolution and provide the expertise necessary to carry out the metrology tasks." The need for metrology support will increase exponentially once machine assembly gets underway. Before machine assembly can start, measurements will be taken to accurately determine the as-built 3-dimensional position of each wall, floor and ceiling of the completed Tokamak Building (and all the steel embedded plates) to transform the ideal CAD design into reality. From this survey, the coordinate system to allow machine construction to commence will be established together with associated survey networks to act as reference points during assembly. Phase one machine assembly is broken down into some 950 construction work packages—it will be up to the ITER metrology team to select the measurements that need to be done and to schedule the metrology tasks.

When preparation work began on the platform in Saint-Paul-lez-Durance more than seven years ago, ITER was a mystery for many people in neighbouring towns and villages. Since that date, some 70,000 people, most of them local residents, have been welcomed to the construction site. ITER is no longer a "UFO"; as more and more local companies have become involved in its progress, the project has become part of day-to-day reality.This change in the public's perception could be felt, last Saturday, as some 1,300 visitors flocked to the fifth Open Doors Day since 2009.Visitors now seem "at home" at ITER, more comfortable when asking questions about the science, the technology, the delays and "chances of success" of the project. Whatever their age or their background they also seem to share in the excitement of this unique scientific endeavour. "Do you really mean that fusion could one day provide an unlimited source of energy?" asked many a visitor. Available to answer these questions and many others, to comment on the videos and the mockups in the Visitors Centre, and to take participants on a tour of the worksite were 22 ITER staff volunteers. Explaining ITER to the public is always an enriching experience: physicists are often challenged to answer questions simpler than the ones they had anticipated ... and for this very reason that much more difficult to answer. The Open Doors Day was also largely covered by the media: France Télévision aired a two-minute piece on the evening news locally and the daily newspaper La Provence ran a full page on the "project that could change the course of history." On the front page, a large picture showed a young boy pressing his mouth to the display case containing a model of the ITER Tokamak. The title proclaimed: "The public embraces the ITER Project!" You can find French coverage of the event here: France Télévision, La Provence.

The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has successfully tested a laboratory-designed device to be used to diminish the size of instabilities known as "edge localized modes (ELMs)" on the DIII-D tokamak that General Atomics operates for the US Department of Energy in San Diego. Such instabilities can damage the interior of fusion facilities.   The PPPL device injects granular lithium particles into tokamak plasmas to increase the frequency of the ELMs. The method aims to make the ELMs smaller and reduce the amount of heat that strikes the divertor that exhausts heat in fusion facilities.   The system could serve as a possible model for mitigating ELMs on ITER, the fusion facility under construction in France to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion energy.   "ELMs are a big issue for ITER," said Mickey Wade, director of the DIII-D national fusion program at General Atomics. Large-scale ELMs, he noted, could melt plasma-facing components inside the ITER Tokamak.   General Atomics plans to install the PPPL-designed device, developed by physicist Dennis Mansfield and engineer Lane Roquemore, on DIII-D this fall. Previous experiments using deuterium-injection rather than lithium-injection have demonstrated the ability to increase the ELMs frequency on DIII-D, the ASDEX-Upgrade in Germany and the Joint European Torus in the United Kingdom.   Researchers at DIII-D now want to see how the results for lithium-injection compare with those obtained in the deuterium experiments on the San Diego facility. "We want to put them side-by-side," Wade said.   PPPL-designed systems have proven successful in mitigating ELMs on the EAST tokamak in Hefei, China, and have been used on a facility operated by the Italian National Agency for New Technologies in Frascati, Italy. A system also is planned for PPPL's National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX), the laboratory's major fusion experiment, which is undergoing a $94 million upgrade.   Read the full story on the PPPL website.

The European Domestic Agency for ITER, Fusion for Energy (F4E), is organizing a major business event from 10 to 12 June 2015. The Fusion for Energy Forum is designed as a networking event, aiming to bring together industry representatives, SMEs, European fusion laboratories and policy makers around ITER business opportunities. Participants will have access to the latest information regarding Europe's procurement strategies, the opportunity to meet with F4E procurement staff and the possiblity of creating ties through business to business (B2B) sessions. All information on the Fusion for Energy Forum is centralized on the event website.

The Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research, ITER's neighbour in Saint Paul-lez-Durance, has published issue #6 of the WEST newsletter. The issue features a report on the 1st international WEST workshop held in Aix-en-Provence on 30 June-2 July and several articles documenting the project's progress. WEST stands for (W Environment in Steady-state Tokamak), where "W" is the chemical symbol of tungsten. Read WEST Newsletter #6 here.

German researchers Christian Day and Thomas Giegerich from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) are the first recipients of the European Prize for Innovation in Fusion Research launched by the European Commission. The prize—a new funding instrument introduced by the Horizon 2020 Program—rewards excellence in innovation in the fusion research program as well as the quality of the researchers and industries involved. The winners were announced on Tuesday 30 September during the 28th Symposium on Fusion Technology (SOFT) in San Sebastian, Spain. The winning innovation—called KALPUREX (short for: Karlsruhe liquid metal based pumping process for fusion reactor exhaust gases)—is a novel fuel cycle concept for DEMO and future fusion power plants. While ITER will rely on a cryogenic pumping and gas separation system, the gas throughput within a fusion power plant is expected to be many factors higher. Increasing the cryogenic pumping and separating capacities would require even larger and more expensive cryogenic facilities, clearly impacting plant investment and operational costs.   The KALPUREX design concept proposes non-cryogenic vacuum pumping, based on continuous operation (important to limiting fuel build-up in the machine) and gas separation close to the torus vessel (allowing a direct shortcut between the pumping and the fuelling systems). Tests have been performed at KIT on vacuum pumps capable of performing continually and three technologies were identified—a metal foil pump, a vapor diffusion pump and a modified liquid ring pump (much used in the chemical industry).   A patent has been filed for the KALPUREX process, which is expected to be of high interest to European industry. For more information on the KALPUREX design, please contact Christian Day directly at christian.day@kit.edu.   Sabina Griffith​   --Pictured: Christian Day and Thomas Giegerich from KIT

​On 9 October 2014 the European Commission invites the fusion community into the heart of the European Quarter, the Solvay Library, to officially launch the European Consortium for the Development of Fusion Energy, EUROfusion for short. The new consortium agreement will substitute the fourteen year-old European Fusion Development Agreement (EFDA), as well as 29 bilateral Association agreements between the Commission and research institutions in 27 countries. The formation of EUROfusion marks a big step forward for Europe's quest to develop fusion power as a climate-friendly energy source that will contribute to meet a growing global energy demand. The EUROfusion Consortium enables Europe's national laboratories to pool their resources even more efficiently — a measure which became necessary to meet the challenge of increasingly complex and large-scale projects such as ITER and DEMO. The preparation for such a joint fusion programme started in 2012. All EU research laboratories jointly drafted a detailed goal-oriented programme to realise fusion energy by 2050. This programme, known as the 'Roadmap to the Realisation of Fusion Electricity' outlines the most efficient path to fusion power. By the end of that year it was endorsed by all parties. The roadmap has two main aims: Preparing for ITER experiments in order to ensure that Europe makes best possible use of ITER and to develop concepts for a fusion power demonstration plant DEMO. The necessary research towards reaching these aims is carried out by universities and research centres within the current European Framework Programme Horizon 2020. More than before does the programme involve industries in the process of designing components and finding technical solutions. Through EUROfusion, the European fusion research programme will have direct access to various European experiments that are relevant to fulfil roadmap missions. The world's largest magnetic fusion experiment, the Joint European Torus (JET) in Culham, UK, will continue to be exploited by EUROfusion until 2018. JET, often nicknamed "Little ITER", has already been paving the way for ITER and continues to align its scientific programme to ITER needs. The Solvay library is the ideal venue for the launch of EUROfusion: inaugurated in 1902 its architecture accommodated new ways of academic teaching. The new architecture of EUROfusion strengthens Europe's leading position in fusion research by integrating a strong central programming. Article orginally posted on the EFDA website.

​The extension to the ITER Headquarters to the ITER Organization was handed over on 30 September in a ceremony during which Tim Watson, head of the Buildings and Site Infrastructure Directorate, accepted the building from the contractor Travaux du Midi. The 3,500-square-metre extension (5 storeys high, 35 metres long) will share the same architectural features as the existing building. It will accomodate some 350 ITER staff and contractors  presently hosted in buildings one kilometre away. Moving will be organized in stages from October to December 2014. From left to right: Tim Watson, head of the ITER Buildings & Site Directorate; architect Tillman Reichert (Ricciotti Architects); and Pierre Bisagno of Les Travaux du Midi.

​Studying the intricacies and mysteries of the sun is physicist Wendell Horton life's work. A widely known authority on plasma physics, his study of the high temperature gases on the sun, or plasma, consistently leads him around the world to work on a diverse range of projects that have great impact. Fusion energy is one such key scientific issue that Horton is investigating and one that has intrigued researchers for decades. ...   It's no secret that the demand for energy around the world is outpacing the supply. Fusion energy has tremendous potential, however, harnessing the power of the sun for this burgeoning energy source requires extensive work.   Through the Institute for Fusion Studies at The University of Texas at Austin, Horton collaborates with researchers at ITER, a fusion lab in France and the National Institute for Fusion Science in Japan to address these challenges. At ITER, Horton is working with researchers to build the world's largest tokamak—the device that is leading the way to produce fusion energy in the laboratory. ...   Perfecting the design of the tokamak is essential to producing fusion energy and since it is not fully developed, Horton performs supercomputer simulations on the Stampede supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) to model plasma flow and turbulence inside the device.   "Simulations give us information about plasma in three dimensions and in time, so that we are able to see details beyond what we would get with analytic theory and probes and high-tech diagnostic measurements," Horton said Read more at PhysOrg.  

On Monday 29 September, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN, celebrated its 60th anniversary with an event attended by delegations from 35 countries. Founded in 1954, CERN's origins can be traced back to the aftermath of the Second World War, when a small group of visionary scientists and public administrators on both sides of the Atlantic identified fundamental research as a potential vehicle to rebuild the continent and to foster peace in a troubled region. Today, CERN is the largest particle physics laboratory in the world and a prime example of international collaboration, bringing together scientists representing almost 100 nationalities. A full report and videos are available on the CERN website.

​In November 2006, the last LHC dipole and quadrupole cold masses arrived at CERN, signalling the end of the industrial construction of the major components of the new 27-km particle collider (CERN Courier October 2006 p28 and January/February 2007 p25). The LHC then entered the installation and the commissioning phases. In the same month, at the Elysée Palace in Paris, the ITER Agreement was signed by seven parties: China, the EU, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the US. The Agreement's ratification in October of the following year marked the start of a new mega-science project — ITER ... that in many respects is the heir of the LHC. Both machines are based on, for example, a huge superconducting magnet system, large cryogenic plants of unmatched power, a large volume of ultra-high vacuum, a complex electrical powering system, sophisticated interlock and protection systems, high-technology devices and work in highly radioactive environments. Read more on the CERN website.

​The University of Wisconsin Fusion Technology Institute, founded in 1971, has been a leader in fusion and plasma physics research, with a broad range of basic science, engineering, and applications programs. The Institute has done pioneering experimental work using advanced helium-3 fuel to produce fusion energy. Dr. Kulcinski is the Director of the Institute, Associate Dean for Research in the College of Engineering, and Grainger Professor of Nuclear Engineering. He has led a scientific team which has doggedly pursued, and tirelessly promoted, research into the advanced fusion fuels, such as helium-3, which will create the energy for the future. Read more in the Executive Intelligence Review