The three-trailer convoy that passed the ITER gates at 2:30 a.m. on Thursday 10 December held a strong symbolic significance for all those involved in the project.     However large and impressive, the three 50-tonne elements delivered to ITER are but a small part of the completed component, representing only 1/25th of the mass of the cryostat (3,850 tonnes). ITER's cryostat will be the largest, and also the most complex, stainless steel high-vacuum chamber ever built.   Procured by India and manufactured at Larsen & Toubro's Hazira plant, the three segments delivered on Thursday and the three others that are expected on 17 December will form tier 1 of the cryostat base section.   However large and impressive, the three 50-tonne elements delivered to ITER are but a small part of the completed 3,850-tonne component. Once all segments and additional parts have been delivered, unpacked and stored in the Cryostat Workshop, ITER will have achieved the first milestone validated by the ITER Council during its November meeting for the years 2016-2017 ─ one that was scheduled for the first quarter of 2016.   "We are three days early in our celebration, as the rest of the shipment is due on 17 December," said ITER Director-General Bernard Bigot at the small gathering organized on Monday 14 December in the Cryostat Workshop. "But we can already celebrate a great accomplishment, one the is the fruit of remarkably integrated work and coordinated effort and that represents the first milestone of the new proposed Baseline."   Online from halfway across the globe, Shishir P. Deshpande, head of ITER India, stressed the importance of the "professionalism and enthusiasm" of logistics provider DAHER who handled the loads all the way from India to the ITER site.   Philippe Tollini, Larsen & Toubro director for Europe and Russia, noted an interesting coincidence: "As if on cue, the cryostat segments were delivered to ITER on the last day of the Conference on Climate Change in Paris. It was a way of saying ─ yes, ITER's (and fusion energy's) contribution to the future of the planet is on its way..."   In a few months ─ in March or April according to the schedule ─ tier 2 of the cryostat base will be delivered, followed by tier 1 of the lower cylinder. Heavy frames and welding equipment will be brought in the Cryostat Workshop and by the summer of 2016 welding operations will begin.   "Let us be proud of what is being accomplished here; but let us also be humble in the face of what remains to be done," said Director-General Bigot. "Beyond what we see here, beyond the steel and the highest technology, there is a project that is essential for the future of mankind. It is our pride, honour and responsibility to bring it successfully to completion."  

The final design review of the ITER blanket manifolds was held on 9-10 December, with more than 30 participants from the ITER Organization Central Team, the European Domestic Agency, contracting organizations, and invited external subject matter experts.   The blanket manifold system feeds cooling water to the different blanket modules through pipes arranged in bundles and routed mostly through the upper ports of the vacuum vessel. With a total flow rate of 3 120 kg/s—or the average flow rate of a small river—the blanket manifold system removes up to 736 MW of thermal power through 6.5 km (45 tonnes) of piping.   "The development and validation of the final design is a major achievement as the blanket manifolds are planned for installation during the first phase of machine assembly, before First Plasma," says Rene Raffray, who leads the Blanket Integrated Product Team and the Blanket Section. "We are designing and manufacturing the first blanket manifolds to operate in a fusion reactor environment."   Traditionally a manifold system can be described as a fairly conventional assembly of pipes. Due to the demanding operating conditions and constraints of ITER, however, the design of the blanket manifold system was particularly challenging. For example, the attachment features between the pipes and the vacuum vessel supports need to be electrically insulated in order to maintain electromagnetic forces during plasma disruptions at acceptable levels. At the same time, these features need to be thermally conducting so that the nuclear heat generated in the supports is transferred to the pipes and not to the vacuum vessel where it might cause unacceptable thermal stresses.   The review panel confirmed the soundness of the design and congratulated the manifold team, with contributions from the ITER Organization Central Team, the European Domestic Agency and contracting organizations. The blanket manifold design makes use of a ceramic insulating layer configuration (alumina being the preferred option) to meet these constraints.   Other design challenges are linked to the need to achieve tight assembly tolerances (on the order of 1 mm) for a component measuring 6 to 7 metres. An extensive validation program has been performed on mockups to demonstrate that these tolerances can be met; another program is underway to validate the support design.   In assessing the work presented at the final design review Brad Nelson, chief engineer at the US ITER Project Office and chair of the review panel, confirmed the suitability of the design and thanked the manifold team for the high level of preparation, clear presentations and thorough documentation. During the debriefing, one panel member added: "Ownership and competence in the design team is evident."   The focus will now be on final touches to the design based on the panel feedback and preparation for the Blanket Manifold Procurement Arrangement with the European Domestic Agency planned for signature in 2016.

Read the full reports issued by the European Domestic Agency on JT-60SA's vacuum vessel assembly and cryogenic system installation. The JT-60SA fusion experiment in Naka, Japan, is designed to support the operation of ITER and to investigate how best to optimize the operation of fusion power plants that are built after ITER.   It is a joint international research and development project involving Japan and Europe, using infrastructure of the existing JT-60 Upgrade experiment. SA stands for "super, advanced," since the experiment will have superconducting coils and study advanced modes of plasma operation. This satellite tokamak program was established in 1997 as one of three joint projects between Europe and Japan within the Broader Approach Agreement.   Construction has been underway since January 2013. In the last few months, major assembly milestones have been reported by the European Domestic Agency, including the completion of vacuum vessel assembly and the installation of the machine's cryogenic system.   The vacuum vessel, with a diameter of 10 metres and a height of 6.6 metres, is made of ten sectors that are welded together within strict tolerances of a few millimetres only. Assembly work began in 2013 and was completed recently. Only one sector remains to be welded; before this, 18 toroidal field coils must be manoeuvred into place.   In JT-60SA's cryogenic hall, the large refrigeration cold box (which cools the helium) and the auxiliary cold box (which distributes and controls helium flows) are in place. Installation of the cryogenic system has also been completed. JT-60SA's cryogenic system, with an equivalent refrigeration capacity of 9 kW at 4.5 K (-269 degrees C), will use helium to cool the superconducting magnets, thermal shields, and cryopumps.  Part of the European in-kind contributions to the JT-60SA project, the cryogenic system was a voluntary contribution from France. The European agency collaborated with CEA (the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission) to develop the preliminary design and specifications; in November 2013 CEA contracted the detailed design, manufacturing, installation and commissioning of this system to Air Liquide Advanced Technology in Sassenage, France.   Read the full reports issued by the European Domestic Agency on JT-60SA's vacuum vessel assembly and cryogenic system installation.

Sunday, 20:00, Paris, le Périphérique: The ring road, the aorta of the French capital, is "saturated," the traffic signs say. After the weekend, the Parisians are slowly rolling home. The Eiffel Tower with its bright Christmas illumination is visible from afar, welcoming the visitor. Bienvenue à Paris! This is where the world is zooming in these days, where nothing less than the future of our planet is being decided. The 21st Conference of the Parties—in short COP21—the largest climate conference ever. And ITER is participating! Monday, 6:00, Le Bourget, the COP21 site: Queuing in line with the truckers at porte K bis, the delivery entrance of the conference, waiting for permission to enter. There are armed police everywhere. On foot, on wheels, on horses. It is pitch dark and a cold wind is blowing. Only the huge tents that have been erected for security checks are flooded with light. The papers are finally signed, the passport scanned, the car and all it carries checked, first by dogs and then by a huge X-ray machine that passes over the entire car.   Clearance, go! But where? The plywood city built up for the COP21 next to the airport in Le Bourget still lies in darkness. Only a few guards and cleaning personnel are around at this time of day. On my left lies the airstrip with an impressive number of parked Lear jets, on my right a real-size Ariane rocket reaches into the early morning sky. Then the Air and Space Museum comes into sight. It is here where the COP21 hosts one of its side events, La Galerie. It is here where we will raise the ITER flag. We brought the model of the ITER machine and although our stand is small in terms of square metres, we are determined to compete with tidal wave power, the solar and wind world, food produced by micro-organisms—yes, the food chain plays an essential part in the climate equation—or a sustainable Morocco. And the visitors love us. By the end of the second day Krista Dulon from the ITER Communication team has answered all the questions possible and handed out all the swag we brought with us. Also, the pile of brochures is melting fast. Tuesday, 8:30, Paris, Hotel Potocki: It is part of our mission to also participate in the conference "Energy for Tomorrow," hosted by the International New York Times (see also here). We were far too late to sign in for this event and to join the impressive line-up of speakers on stage such as US Head of State John Kerry, the CEOs of Unilever, Ikea, Patagonia, RWE, ABB, Ericsson, or the Kellogg Company. However, ITER Head of Communication Laban Coblentz and Science Engineering Officer Akko Maas chair a session called "Ask the Expert" and they are doing well. By the end of the day many more people, influential people, know what ITER stands for. We made new friends. Mission accomplished. On the last day of the exhibition a well-known visitor stopped by the ITER stand: His Serene Highness, Prince Albert II of Monaco. Wednesday, 22:00, Le Bourget: Again in line with the truckers. Time to dismantle the stand. For the exhibitors promoting alternatives to the carbon energy era the COP21 is over. It is now up to the state leaders and their negotiators to get back to the negotiating table and to come to a conclusion on how to stop our planet from heating up. And they will. By Saturday the news will have spread.   "The future of energy is being reshaped as we speak," Fatih Birol, the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, had said one day earlier at the "Energy for Tomorrow" conference. John Kerry left no doubt as well that things are about to change. The transformation will be "business driven," he had stated. "If the right signals come out of the Parties, the low carbon market will explode." And so it may be. And we, ITER, will be back!

On 10 December 2015 the first helium plasma was produced in the Wendelstein 7-X fusion device at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Greifswald, Germany. Following nine years of construction work, more than a million assembly hours, and one year of integrated testing, experimental operation has now commenced according to plan. Wendelstein 7-X is the world's largest stellarator-type fusion device.   "The achievement of first plasma in Wendelstein 7-X marks an important milestone in the development of fusion energy: the device is the world's largest advanced stellarator and opens a new era in research into magnetically confined fusion plasmas," said David Campbell, head of the Science & Operations Division at ITER. "Its design is based on a sophisticated optimization of the magnetic field geometry which is predicted to allow the full exploitation of the potential of the stellarator configuration for fusion plasma confinement. Although smaller than ITER and not designed for operation with deuterium-tritium plasmas, the detailed studies of fusion plasma performance and physics processes to which the Wendelstein research program opens the gateway will be significant for the future development of fusion energy."   The operating team in the control room started up the magnetic field, initiated the computer-operated control system, fed approximately one milligram of helium gas into the evacuated plasma vessel, and switched on the microwave heating for a short 1,8 megawatt pulse. The machine's first plasma, which could be observed by the installed cameras and measuring devices, lasted one tenth of a second and achieved a temperature of around one million degrees.   "We're starting with a plasma produced from the noble gas helium," explained project leader Thomas Klinger. "We're not changing over to the actual investigation object, a hydrogen plasma, until next year. This is because it's easier to achieve the plasma state with helium."   "We're very satisfied," added Hans-Stephan Bosch, whose division is responsible for the operation of the device. "Everything went according to plan."   The next task will be to extend the duration of the plasma discharges and to investigate the best method of producing and heating helium plasmas using microwaves. After a break for New Year, confinement studies will continue in January, which will prepare the way for producing the first plasma from hydrogen.       

The Russian Domestic Agency for ITER reports that two shipments recently left factories in Saint Petersburg and Podolsk for the ITER Project. The first shipment contains correction coil busbars—the components that connect magnet coils to their power sources—as well as flexible links for busbar interconnections. These components were transported by truck (pictured) from the Efremov Institute (NIIEFA) in Saint Petersburg directly to the ITER site. The fabrication and supply of switching equipment, busbars and energy-absorbing resistors for the power supply and the protection of the ITER superconducting magnetic system add up to the most expensive, and one of the most complicated, systems falling within the scope of in-kind procurement from Russia (25 systems in all). In accordance with the busbar Procurement Arrangement, NIIEFA will manufacture and ship approximately 5.4 km of busbars with a total weight exceeding 500 tons. In the second shipment, four lengths of poloidal field superconductor (two unit lengths of 720 metres and two of 414 metres) were loaded onto trucks at the Cable Institute (JSC VNIIKP) in Podolsk for delivery to the European jacketing line at Criotec (Chivasso, Italy). The conductors are destined for the ITER poloidal field coil magnet system. -- Alexander Petrov, ITER Russia

On 4 December the Programme Manager of EUROfusion, Tony Donné, visited ITER and spoke to staff in the ITER auditorium. EUROfusion is a consortium of 29 research organisations and universities from 26 European countries plus Switzerland that is collaborating to achieve Europe's Fusion Roadmap, which outlines the most efficient way to realize fusion electricity by 2050. ITER is the key facility on the road to fusion energy, and Professor Donné stressed in his talk that everything possible must be done to support ITER construction, optimize ITER operation and ensure minimal delay to the next-phase device, DEMO. Professor Donné also advocated the extension of the European tokamak JET under an international regime in support of ITER. The prolonged use of JET as a risk-mitigation device for ITER and for the training of a generation of scientists, engineers and technicians for ITER could give the world fusion community access to deuterium-tritium plasmas approximately 10 years before ITER. Read more about EUROfusion, Europe's Fusion Roadmap, and JET.