An ultra-compact DC 1.3 MV testing power supply has been fabricated by the Japanese Domestic Agency. The power supply is one-tenth the size of conventional power supplies and yet is capable of testing—at the same time—all of the components of the giant neutral beam injection power supplies.   The ITER neutral beam injection system—the power horse of ITER heating systems—will be tested at full-scale at the PRIMA neutral beam test facility in Italy (the MITICA experiment) before being installed on ITER. The system combines a 1 MV power supply for negative ion acceleration and a transmission system (supplied by the Japanese Domestic Agency) with a negative ion source power supply provided by the European Domestic Agency to generate a 1 MeV high-energy ion beam.   The 1 MV ultra-high voltage power supply system is over 80 metres long. In the past, voltage holding tests of equipment exceeding 1 MV were generally conducted indoors in a climate-controlled building, with a separate test for each component. Furthermore, to insulate such high voltage, an insulation distance of 10 metres or more was respected between the equipment and the building, meaning that a large-scale indoor facility, with dozens of metres of margin in all directions, was needed for tests on even one piece of equipment.   ITER requirements, however, dictate that all the components of the neutral beam injection power supply system must be tested at once, with a testing power supply that is one-tenth the size of conventional power supplies.   To reduce the footprint of the system, Japanese engineers reduced the distance required for insulation by housing the testing power supply inside of a pressurized vessel filled with insulating gas. By connecting the pressure vessel directly to the neutral beam injection power supply system, the vessel is isolated from the exterior and protected from dust and moisture. An insulating gas—with voltage resistance properties in line with the design and able to withstand the 1 MV insulation with a high degree of reliability—was sought, system specifications were defined, and configuration and layout were decided.   With these important parameters, the Japanese Domestic Agency and its supplier were finally able to design and fabricate this new ultra-compact testing power supply. The testing power supply complies with the European Pressure Equipment Directive, and is the first component supplied by Japan to have passed these rigorous standards.   After factory voltage holding tests are conducted for each component of a 1 MV power supply system in Japan, the testing power supply will make its way to the PRIMA facility in 2016 and be ready to collectively test the neutral beam injection power supplies on the ITER construction site starting from February 2017.  

As fusion propulsion is still a long way away, one might wonder what ITER and Airbus have in common. In fact, a lot. Like ITER, the European aeronautics consortium is based on international cooperation and shared procurement. And—although building tokamak is much more complex than building an aircraft—the viability of both endeavours long term depends on strong program management and robust industrial partnerships. Hubert Mantel, head of the Centre of Competency Project and Programme Management at Airbus, was invited to speak at ITER in the framework of the Inside ITER lecture series—an enrichment program open to all ITER employees. At the beginning of his Inside ITER presentation on 3 February, Airbus's Hubert Mantel had a few powerful statistics for his audience. Air traffic is doubling every 15 years. An Airbus takes off or lands in the world every two seconds. And there is a nine-year backlog on orders at Airbus (with a similar situation at rival Boeing). "We turn out approximately 60 aircraft per month, and if we could produce more we could sell them," he says. "In such a strong market, we know the two historical operators will eventually be challenged. We need to prepare ourselves now for the arrival of new competition." How to go about refining the processes and methods that define a company to ensure maximum competitiveness? In a company as large as Airbus—employing 55,000 people in civilian aeronautics alone and producing at 11 different sites—it's all about managing complexity. In his presentation to a packed ITER amphitheatre titled "How to tame a 'monster' project: change for the better," Hubert Mantel returned to a key moment in Airbus history when the decision was made to invest heavily in project and program management. The decision was born from a crisis. The development of the giant A380—the most complex development program for Airbus to date—had run grossly over budget and schedule between 1995 and its first flight in 2005. "The situation had enormous consequences throughout the company and we knew, at all levels of the organization, that we couldn't survive a situation like that twice." Did it mean that Airbus was bad at the job it was doing? "Not at all; we had the technology, the talent, and the supply chain," stresses Hubert. "But we needed to improve the way that our projects were managed." With strong support from top management, a project management centre, called the Centre of Competency, was created to promote the best practices throughout the organization. "We were facing the development of a new aircraft, the A350, we knew we couldn't repeat the errors of the A380," recounts Hubert. The Centre of Competency team (approximately 25 full-time staff) started by building the foundations of a new project management culture—in all, it was a two-year effort to improve documentation, processes, methods and tools used throughout the company. Hubert likes to think back at that time as "the easy part." "We looked into lessons learned from past experiences and thought carefully about what had to change so that the same mistakes wouldn't be repeated," says Hubert. He gave one example of a "never again" situation, in which the design and production of a small A380 component (harnesses) had been carried out at different centres in France, Germany and UK with different design tools. "You've probably guessed it—in the end the components couldn't connect during assembly and armies of people had to work day and night to correct the fact that integration wasn't properly done." After the initial "foundation" phase, the team began working to diffuse good practice throughout the organization. "That's the hard part. It's all about training behaviour, and getting people to adopt tools that may not be familiar to them," says Hubert. "At Airbus, it is happening progressively. We still need to enrol the supply chain, where there are variable degrees of experience with project and program management. For the scale of change in project culture that we are attempting, we know it will take at least a decade to implement." Hubert cites two key factors that have contributed to the success of the program at Airbus, which is credited with positively affecting the development of another aircraft, the A350, as well as company earnings since 2010. "We introduced that program during a moment of true crisis—a time when real need was felt throughout the organization and supported at all levels. And top management was on board from the beginning, with the attitude: we will succeed at this program."

From 8-9 December 2014, years of effort and international collaboration paid off as the Final Design Review for the diagnostic first wall was successfully held at ITER Headquarters.   ITER diagnostics will be housed within massive port plugs—stainless steel blocks weighing up to 45 metric tons (for equatorial ports) that "plug" openings in the vacuum vessel. At the equatorial (middle) and upper levels, at least 18 port plugs will be customized to receive diagnostic instruments that will measure plasma temperature, density, radiative properties and first-wall resilience. These sensitive diagnostic instruments need protection from thermal loads, neutron damage, coating by dust and metallic vapour deposition; for this purpose, a diagnostic first wall is installed on the port plugs.   The Final Design Review focused on design aspects that are common to all diagnostic first walls. With a total of 108 pages each, the design reports carefully went over the design requirements, the detailed geometry, and the manufacturing studies of the equatorial and upper port diagnostic first walls that were felt to reflect a wide range of diagnostic first wall configurations. In addition, all the basic configurations and common features were evaluated to allow extrapolation, later on, to specific diagnostic first walls.   The joint efforts of the ITER Diagnostics team and the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory—working under a design Task Agreement signed between the ITER Organization and the US Domestic Agency—concluded with a successful Final Design Review and a team commendation during the ITER Recognition Ceremony held in December. The members of the team are Victor Udintsev, Thibaud Giacomin, Julio Guirao, Christian Vacas and Silvia Iglesias from the ITER Organization and Douglas Loesser, Mark Smith and Yuhu Zhai from the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

​February 11, 2015 marks five years in space for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which provides incredibly detailed images of the whole sun 24 hours a day. Capturing an image more than once per second, SDO has provided an unprecedentedly clear picture of how massive explosions on the sun grow and erupt ever since its launch on Feb. 11, 2010. The imagery is also captivating, allowing one to watch the constant ballet of solar material through the sun's atmosphere, the corona. In honor of SDO's fifth anniversary, NASA has released a video showcasing highlights from the last five years of sun watching. Watch the movie to see giant clouds of solar material hurled out into space, the dance of giant loops hovering in the corona, and huge sunspots growing and shrinking on the sun's surface. The imagery is an example of the kind of data that SDO provides to scientists. By watching the sun in different wavelengths — and therefore different temperatures — scientists can watch how material courses through the corona, which holds clues to what causes eruptions on the sun, what heats the sun's atmosphere up to 1,000 times hotter than its surface, and why the sun's magnetic fields are constantly on the move. View the video on the NASA website.

​The ITER Business Forum 2015 (IBF/15) will take place in Marseille, France from 25 to 27 March 2015.Already, close to 400 participants from 200 companies have registered to participate. (A real-time update is available here.) The agenda is now finalized and includes 14 theme workshops bringing together more than one hundred speakers from the ITER Organization, the procurement agencies for ITER—the Domestic Agencies—and key suppliers.    Registration for one-to-one meetings, either "business to business" or "business to customers," will open in a few days.   IBF/15 is a unique occasion for companies to approach the ITER Project and to investigate possibilities for involvement or partnership around upcoming tender offers.Visit the IBF/15 website for more information.

​The 42nd International Zvenigorod Conference for plasma physics and thermonuclear fusion was held on 9-13 February, near Moscow, Russia. At this annual event, experts from inside Russia and from abroad gather to discuss recent achievements in the areas of high and low temperature plasma research, controlled fusion, and developments in plasma and beam technologies. Part of the conference is traditionally devoted to progress in ITER. In the presence of Anatoly Krasilnikov, head of the Russian Domestic Agency, representatives from ITER Russia and from the research centres and industries involved in the project gave more than 50 oral presentations and reports on the first day of the conference on the progress in ITER procurement and manufacturing. Topics included the magnet system, in-vessel plasma-facing components, and diagnostic instruments. The presentations generated wide interest among the members of the expert community, including representatives of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the State Corporation Rosatom and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). -- Alexander Petrov, ITER Russia