Literally and figuratively, vacuum is a large part of ITER.   At the heart of the machine is a 1,400 m³ vacuum chamber where fusion will take place. And this, in turn, is enclosed within a much larger vacuum vessel (the cryostat, 8,500 m³) that acts much like a thermos to keep the cold in.   Vacuum is key to ITER operation: a submicron crack in a vacuum vessel weld, a puff of particles released by a component's surface or bulk ("outgassing"), or a less than perfectly tight valve are enough to alter the vacuum quality and degrade machine performance.   Leaks and outgassing are the enemy, and it's up to the ITER vacuum group to keep them at bay.   Some 18 months ago, the Vacuum Section began testing vacuum component and material samples in a temporary laboratory made available by the neighbouring CEA research centre. As more and more vacuum components were delivered to ITER, however, the need for a new on-premises facility became evident.   As a result, at ITER Headquarters a basement storage room for discarded hardware was transformed into a fully functional laboratory with component and material qualification equipment.   "We have a mandate to assure vacuum quality," explains Liam Worth, the group's Vacuum Design and Construction Officer. "This means scrupulous component testing and the careful qualification of the materials that will go into the machine."   In the ITER environment, components and materials will be exposed to very harsh conditions. A material's mechanical properties, or even vacuum compatibility, might be well known and documented but its behaviour in a hot plasma environment must be investigated and qualified.   A 1 m³ vacuum tank, an oven, equipment to measure even the lowest outgassing rate, helium leak detectors, and other highly sophisticated rigs will be used to ensure that all vacuum components and materials meet project requirements. The same goes for components. Valves, diagnostic equipment, vacuum gauges—many of which perform a safety function—must be qualified in ITER-relevant conditions. "As part of our commitment to minimize cost and maximize efficiency, we will standardize components for use on ITER vacuum systems," explains Robert Pearce.   A 1 m³ vacuum tank, an oven, equipment to measure even the lowest outgassing rate, helium leak detectors, and other highly sophisticated rigs will be used to ensure that all vacuum components and materials meet project requirements.   "In addition to component qualification and material testing, we aim to offer practical training in vacuum testing, specifically leak testing, which are essential for component acceptance at the factory," adds Pearce. "It is our goal to ensure that our ITER Organization and Domestic Agency colleagues have the competencies required to ensure the vacuum performance of components."   The basement vacuum laboratory was inaugurated on 15 January with equipment demonstrations and talks given by Vacuum Section members. "This is a demonstration of what can be achieved with limited resources and a pragmatic approach to problem solving," says Jean Louis Bersier, the responsible officer for the vacuum laboratory.

Manufactured by SIMIC in Italy, a large steel cylinder (21 metres long, 4.2 metres in diameter, 70 tonnes) was delivered on Friday 23 January to the Air Liquide advanced Technologies workshop near Grenoble, France.   This cylinder forms the shell of one of the three vacuum vessels ("cold boxes") destined for the ITER liquid helium plant. It will house several key components (heat exchangers, cryogenic adsorbers, liquid helium and liquid nitrogen phase separators) involved in the process of cooling helium to the ultra-low temperature of 4.5 K (minus 269° C).   All these elements will be integrated into the cold box by Air Liquide beginning this week.

In the observable Universe, most of the matter is in a state of fusion.   At the core of billions and billions of stars (a few hundred thousand billion in our Milky Way alone!) hydrogen nuclei are patiently transformed into helium, inundating their environment with light and energy.   Based on the largest image of the Andromeda Galaxy ever made — so large that it would require 600 large-screen HDTVs to view it in real size — the video that NASA released a few days ago shows just a few (a mere hundred million) of these blazing fusion furnaces.    

On 16 and 17 December 2014, in Washington, D.C., Fusion Power Associates held its Annual Meeting and Symposium on the theme: "Fusion Energy: Recent Progress and The Road Ahead." About 100 people attended a rich agenda of presentations which provided a comprehensive overview of fusion research today.   Following a keynote address by Steve Cowley, Director of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in the UK, over 40 talks were presented by scientists and government officials. From the ITER Organization, Carlos Alejaldre, the Director of Safety, Quality & Security, presented the status of the project with "ITER: Where are we at?" and I gave a short contribution emphasizing the fact that communication is a strategic activity for ITER and fusion. There were also two specific sessions that reviewed research developments in magnetic and inertial fusion.   It was evident during the presentations that countries like China and South Korea are progressing well with their plans to take the next step after ITER. Wan Yuanxi, dean at the University of Science & Technology in Heifei, presented China's next-step machine called the Chinese Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR). "It is hoped," he said, "that the proposal for CFETR construction can be approved soon," with an eye to starting in the early 2020s and completing the project in ten years.   The picture is similar in South Korea: Gyung Su Lee, from Korea's National Fusion Research Institute, explained that Korea will not wait for ITER results to start on the KDEMO (Korean Demonstration Fusion Power Plant) project. Europe and Japan, although on a less aggressive timetable, are also planning for the steps beyond ITER.   In the US, in the context of budget reductions, the debate has centred on the balance between involvement in ITER and the domestic fusion activities and no clear timetable has been advanced for the next-step after ITER.

In ITER, high-energy beams of neutral deuterium particles will be used for heating the plasma as well as for driving the current and controlling the current profile. Produced by powerful neutral beam injectors, ITER's neutral beams will be the first high-energy beams at 1MV based on a negative ion source. Well in advance of operation, ITER neutral beam technology will be tested at the PRIMA Neutral Beam Test Facility in Padua, Italy, currently under construction. Europe, Japan and India are all contributing components. On 22 December 2014, the Indian Domestic Agency delivered its first component to the facility—a beam dump—destined for the full-scale ITER ion source test bed called SPIDER. The delivery was also the first in-kind delivery carried out by ITER India under the terms of a Procurement Arrangement. The SPIDER beam dump is designed to absorb the ion beam power up to 6.1 MW extracted from the SPIDER beam source; its construction is based on heat transfer elements that work using hyper-vapotron technology. The beam dump was manufactured by PVA Tepla AG in Germany under a contract with ITER India. The manufacturing activities were monitored and assessed according to the approved Manufacturing and Inspection Plan by ITER India and the ITER Organization, who also ensured the implementation of ITER quality requirements during the execution of the project. Factory acceptance tests were successfully performed at the manufacturing site and witnessed by ITER India, the ITER Organization and the end-user Consorzio RFX (host to PRIMA). Following the successful delivery of the SPIDER beam dump to the Consorzio RFX site in December, the component was placed in storage to await its integration with the SPIDER vacuum vessel.

In ITER, 440 blanket modules—consisting each of a first wall panel and a heavy shield block—will be bolted to the vacuum vessel wall. A number of customizable components such as bolt housings and key pads will be machined prior to assembly to achieve rigorous alignment tolerances for each module.   The key pads on the shield blocks interface with the keys on the vacuum vessel through which poloidal loads are transmitted. The pads need to be electrically insulated to help control current paths and restrict electromagnetic loads during ITER operation. This insulation is provided through an alumina coating on specific surfaces of the pads.   Because this coating has the potential to degrade due to cyclic and impact loads caused by off-normal events such as disruptions, an experimental program to test the robustness of various ceramic coatings has been undertaken, which includes static testing at the NIKIET institute in Russia (Moscow) and dynamic impact testing at the TNO Structural Dynamics Laboratory in The Netherlands (Delft).   For impact testing, insulating coatings were applied to 110 mm circular pads through three different processes: plasma spray, high velocity oxygen fuel, and detonation coating. Samples were subjected to 500 impacts using a drop test tower that simulated different loading events (see video link below). During the impact, each pad was loaded up to 2.5 MN (the equivalent of 250 tonnes or about the maximum landing weight of a Boeing 747-300).   Continuous electrical monitoring of each sample's insulating coating showed that all samples successfully survived without an electrical breakdown. The next step will now be for the supplier to confirm the preferred approach to applying this coating and to complete a final qualification program.   The key pads are part of the Procurement Arrangement signed between the ITER Organization and the Russian Domestic Agency on Blanket Connections (December 2014).   Watch a short clip on the testing of key pads at the TNO Structural Dynamics Laboratory

​Greg Clark MP, UK Minister of State for Universities, Science & Cities, visited JET on Friday 23 January to find out how researchers and engineers are bringing fusion power closer to reality. Mr Clark met staff from EUROfusion—the European consortium that coordinates the research on JET—and CCFE, which operates the experiment on their behalf. He heard about how JET, as the world's largest magnetic fusion device, has a unique role in preparing for the ITER international research project, which when constructed will aim to prove that fusion can be a viable commercial-scale energy source. During his tour he met CCFE engineer Chris Fowler (pictured) in the JET Remote Handling Unit. Chris gave the Minister a demonstration of the advanced remote handling technology that allows operators to maintain and upgrade JET without the need to send people into the device. Remote handling and robotics was the main theme of the day, as Mr Clark officially started construction of Culham's new RACE centre with a groundbreaking ceremony.   Read the full article on the CCFE website.