Many passers-by paused for a moment and picked up their cell phones to capture the scene. It was indeed rare to see dancers on the square outside of the Pavillon Noir—home to the Ballet Preljocaj in Aix-en-Provence. The dancers had abandoned their natural habitat because the iconic black cube had become, for one week, centre stage for the world's largest gathering of specialist in magnet technologies. Nearly 1,000 scientists and engineers convened for the 28th International Conference on Magnet Technology (MT-28) from 10 to 15 September to share the latest advances in magnets for medical applications, high energy physics, transport and aviation, decarbonization projects, and—last but not least—fusion energy. The conference was co-hosted by the ITER Organization and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). A status report on ITER, delivered by ITER Deputy Director-General for Science and Technology Yutaka Kamada, marked the opening of the 28th Conference; five days later it was closed with a special forum on "alternative paths to commercial fusion." Gianfranco Federici, head of the Fusion Technology Department at EUROfusion, read down the "to do" list for fusion to succeed ("every machine after ITER must produce tritium") and challenged the "smaller, faster, cheaper" approach of some of the private fusion startups. Federici also stressed the importance of ITER and its key goal: to produce a burning plasma ("without that we can go home!") Co-panelist Dennis Whyte, director of the MIT Plasma Science & Fusion Center (PSFC) insisted that one of the key drivers for commercial fusion deployment would be the price per kilowatt-hour. PSFC is currently collaborating with the private start-up Commonwealth Fusion Systems on a compact high-field tokamak called SPARC. 519 posters were presented during the five-day conference. Approximately one-fifth of participants were students. For the first time in its history (see box), the conference introduced special topical sessions and plenaries of interest to a wider audience. Denis Le Bihan for example, the French founder of NeuroSpin (CEA Saclay) which is dedicated to the study of the human brain by magnetic resonance imaging, explained how the whole-body 11.7 T Iseult magnet is helping to better understand and even treat certain neurological or psychiatric conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, and schizophrenia. A bit of history The Magnet Technology conference series started in 1965, in Stanford, California; a second followed in 1967 in Oxford (United Kingdom). The conference was originally orientated towards high energy physics and accelerator magnets. MT-1 had one paper on fusion out of about 75 submitted; by 1970 there were three papers on fusion out of about 100 with a copper magnet design for the Wendelstein 7 stellarator. The first tokamak magnet papers appeared in 1972.  In the early years, the conference did not occur on a regular basis. By the 1990s, the conference had developed a tradition of rotating between Asia, the United States and Europe and occurring every two years. The first Asian conference was Tsukuba in Japan (1989), followed by Beijing (1997). By the 2000s the conference papers were about 25% fusion related, 25% high energy physics, 25% medical imaging and 25% power engineering, with a heavy bias towards superconducting magnets. At the most recent MT-28, 730 papers were presented and 400 to 500 submissions for publication in IEEE Transactions of Applied Superconductivity are expected. The distribution of papers by origin at this recent conference was Europe: 257, China: 170, USA: 117, Japan: 93, Korea: 69. An entire morning session was dedicated to the question how superconducting technology can hasten carbon neutrality. Sataro Yamaguchi, from Chubu University in Japan, thinks that the share of hydropower within Japan's energy mix could increase from the current 5 percent to 40 percent using superconducting storage technology. Other special sessions were dedicated to growing networks—for example Women in Fusion and the newly formed Superconductor Global Alliance (ScGA). Mike Lamont, director of Accelerators and Technology at CERN, sketched out the requirements for the next generation of particle accelerators. In an extensive industrial exhibition, 43 companies from around the world presented applications in superconductivity as wells as new superconductor concepts, with much of the debate focused on the performance and commercial readiness of high-temperature superconductors such as rare-earth barium copper oxide (ReBCO). Once more, fusion could be the catalyst for advances in this field, an exhibitor said. And with the conference venue located only 30 kilometres south of the ITER site, more than 500 participants took the chance to see the ITER construction site and the project's impressive magnets with their own eyes. If you missed it last week, see a gallery of photos here.

ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi and the Chinese Minister of Science and Technology (MOST) Wang Zhigang share a common academic background. They both trained as electrical engineers and when discussing ITER, as they did during the Minister's visit on 25 September, their exchange was precise, concrete and to the point. The Minister, whose visit comes after the Director-General's recent visit to China, knows ITER well. He is also familiar with the difficulties and obstacles that any large engineering project implementing "disruptive technologies" must face. As the former general manager of the China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, the third largest electronics and IT company in China, he encountered many challenges of the type and considers them "quite normal." "ITER is a project of extraordinary complexity," stressed Barabaschi in his presentation to the Minister. "It has many features of a complex operating system, with a multiplicity of interfaces between different sub-systems and components that must work together seamlessly." ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi and the Chinese Minister of Science and Technology Wang Zhigang both trained as engineers. Their exchange was precise, concrete and to the point. The ITER Director-General had compared driving ITER forward with "sailing a boat in rough seas," where steering requires quick reaction times. In his response, the Minister reaffirmed China's "full support" for the project and said he was convinced that "the boat will reach its destination and achieve its target safely."

One of ITER's three external heating systems—neutral beam injection—is being tested in advance at the Neutral Beam Test Facility (NBTF) in Padua, Italy. The state-of-the-art facility represents the culmination of decades of research.  On 13 September 2023, engineers and physicists from the Neutral Beam Injection Group (ITER Technology and Diagnostics Division) at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) visited the installation as part of a two-day meeting in Padua at Consorzio RFX to discuss progress in collaborative activities for ITER neutral beam injection. Members of the Neutral Beam Test Facility team exchanged recent experimental results with their IPP colleagues and discussed further plans to be carried out at both institutes. They visited the test facility's experimental hall and its two full-size prototypes—SPIDER (an ITER-scale negative ion source designed to achieve all ion source requirements) and MITICA (a full-size 1 MV heating neutral beam injector, capable of full acceleration voltage and power). At IPP two test facilities have been supporting the development of the radio-frequency-driven ion source for ITER neutral beam injection for many years as part of the European roadmap: BATMAN Upgrade, a prototype ion source, and ELISE, an ion source one half the size of ITER's.   Inside of the MITICA bunker with the vacuum vessel on the right and the last part of the 1MV transmission line in blue. When it enters operation, MITICA will be a 1:1-scale ITER neutral beam injector, the first to operate at ITER requirements (up to the full acceleration voltage of 1 MV and full power of 16.5 MW). At the Neutral Beam Test Facility, hosted by the Italian research laboratory Consorzio RFX, SPIDER started operation in 2018 and is currently completing a full device upgrade, initiated after the first experimental campaigns identified a set of key improvements. This is exactly what the NBTF project is for—testing and exploring physics and technology issues and validating concepts before the neutral beam system is installed on ITER.  Although neutral beam injection is routinely used for plasma heating in fusion devices, the size of ITER imposes enhanced requirements: particle beams have to be much thicker, for example, and individual particles have to be much faster in order to travel far into the core of the plasma.  Read more about neutral beam injection and the Neutral Beam Test Facility here and here.

The new ITER Star Awards recognize exemplary performance and commitment. Every year, during the annual assessment campaign, ITER staff may be recognized for exemplary performance by their managers through mechanisms such as performance ratings, rewards, or promotions. A new spot award initiative—the ITER Star Awards—is meant to complement the managerial tools that recognize achievements, broadening the recognition campaign to reward colleagues from across the ITER Project "on the spot," or at least more regularly than once a year. Staff of the ITER Organization, but also non-staff personnel (interim staff, ITER Project Associates) and staff from the Domestic Agencies can be nominated by peers from the ITER Organization for exceptional accomplishments or behaviours that exemplify ITER values and engagement in the project. "These new spot awards allow colleagues to realize just how appreciated they are by their own peers for their collaboration and attitudes," says Shira Tabachnikoff, Internal & Stakeholder Relations Manager, who helped to roll out the program with colleagues from the Human Resources Division. Criteria for nomination include demonstrating professionalism, excellence and dedication in daily work; striving to embed a safety culture; creating a culture of diversity and inclusiveness; and bringing about improvements through cutting-edge technology or innovation. During the first campaign launched in July, 128 people were selected for ITER Star Awards. Awards are either monetary or non-monetary (Recognition Awards). In a ceremony on Tuesday 19 September, a group of 28 received a personalized, star-shaped, engraved-glass Recognition Award. "In the end, we are all working for the same objective: to successfully complete the ITER Project," said ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi, who shook hands with each recipient. "We are one team. And these awards reflect our singular and unified commitment."

The Swiss TCV tokamak (for Tokamak à Configuration Variable, or "variable configuration" tokamak) has been exploring the physics of nuclear fusion for 30 years and training generations of students in the process. An integral part of the Swiss Plasma Center at EPFL (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne), TCV has a staff of about 200 researchers and students. The mission of the TCV program, according to a press release issued this month, is to apply the device's highly specialized plasma shaping capability to develop new plasma configurations and plasma shapes. Combined with a wide range of versatile heating and current drive schemes and up-to-date measurement and control systems, TCV is a powerful tool to explore the physics of magnetically confined plasmas. Research on TCV supports experimental reactors under construction, such as ITER, and also investigates new and alternative avenues in view of future prototype power plants. "Our work at the Swiss Plasma Center over the past 30 years has provided key insights into plasma behaviour," says Director Ambrogio Fasoli. "The TCV plays a vital role in this endeavour. Recent upgrades to its infrastructure have expanded our capability to investigate key issues for ITER, DEMO, and future fusion reactors." Because EPFL's tokamak is a "variable configuration" reactor, scientists can use it to observe how changes in plasma configuration affect the plasma's properties like temperature and confinement quality or to study new plasma configurations. TCV can also be used to evaluate different configurations for divertors, an essential component for plasma exhaust in a fusion reactor. The Swiss Plasma Center recently teamed up with Google DeepMind to develop a new magnetic control method for plasmas, based on deep reinforcement learning, and successfully applied it to real-world plasma configurations in the TCV tokamak for the first time. "The challenges ahead are substantial," says Fasoli, "but we are well-positioned to make significant contributions to the development of fusion energy as a critical component of the future global energy mix." Read the full press release here.

A visit to ITER would not be complete without a peek into the Tokamak pit where the machine is being progressively assembled. For several years, one of the equatorial "port cells" (large openings through the bioshield and cryostat) served as viewing point. But the spot was also a passageway to the scaffolding stairs leading in and out of the pit, and it had to be closed to visits when different activities, such as metrology, were performed. In order for assembly activities to proceed undisturbed while offering visitors the best possible view on the "Holy of Holies," where the artificial Sun will rise, another of the 17 equatorial port cells, still unused, has been exclusively reserved for visitors. Equipped with a plexiglass pane to prevent objects from falling into the pit, it offers an aquarium-like view that is particularly striking. Even better than the one from the previous port cell.

"The world we live in today [has] demands for clean energy outstripping supply. This has made clean sources of energy, such as fusion, of increasing interest to policymakers, investors and the wider public. In principle, fusion could generate four times more energy per kilogram of fuel than fission and nearly four million times more energy than burning oil and coal. The current level of international commitment to this clean source of energy is bringing us closer to fusion energy. So begins the 800-page Fundamentals of Magnetic Fusion Technology published this month by the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA. The high-level text book is written for graduate students focusing on fusion technology, as well as for established plasma physicists and others working in the field and requiring a comprehensive overview.  "Over the coming decades fusion R&D will shift from being science-driven and laboratory-based towards a technology-driven, industry-based venture. Significant innovation is and will be required [...]. Furthermore, the transition will focus on technologies and standards associated with the 'nuclearization of fusion' which has consequences for the required competences of the workforce. The main objective of this publication is to contribute to the consolidation and better exploitation of the achievements already reached in the past to tackle the present challenges in preparing the workforce in the different areas, with special attention to continuous professional development and life-long learning." Download or order your copy from the IAEA website.