What’s New

China has conferred its annual International Scientific and Technological Cooperation Award on a figure closely associated with the ITER Project—Academician Evgeny Velikhov, who helped to initiate the project at the highest political level in the mid-1980s and who served as ITER Council Chair during the technical design phase for ITER and again at the start of ITER construction from 2010-2012.

Currently director of the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, Academician Velikhov was recognized by the Chinese government for his long-term contribution to Chinese-Russian fusion cooperation. He initiated bilateral cooperation between the Kurchatov and ASIPP (Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences), helping China in the successful development of a superconducting tokamak. He has visited China multiple times in recent years as an international advisor and has made valuable suggestions on the conceptual design of China's next-phase device, the China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR).

The International Scientific and Technological Cooperation Award is the most prestigious honour in China for foreigners or foreign organizations "who make outstanding contributions to science and technology development in China."

Read the full story in ASIPP's January newsletter, below.

During its fifth General Assembly held at ITER on 4 February, the European Fusion Education Network FuseNet approved a work plan for the period 2016-2017.

The FuseNet Association was founded in December 2010 as a platform for stimulating, supporting and coordinating fusion education in Europe, with the aim to the aim of attracting good students and providing them challenging education in fusion science and technology, developing educational tools, encouraging student mobility, and acting as matchmaker between industry and research labs/academia for student internships and vacancies.

FuseNet members are made up of universities with programs in fusion as well as research institutes and industry involved in ITER and/or fusion technology. Membership is not restricted to European organizations.

For more information, visit the FuseNet website.

A new series of five downloadable posters is available in the ITER on-line Publication Centre (/posters). Designed for A1 printing, they are sized for classrooms, offices and labs.

This first series features the ITER machine, several of its principal components (the cryostat and the divertor), assembly tooling and ITER construction. A second series is planned.

ITER aficionados to your printers!

In the latest issue of NFRI News Korea's National Fusion Research Institute reports the latest KSTAR experimental campaign. Ten overseas research institutes and nine Korean institutes collaborated on this eighth campaign, which ended in December 2015. 

The January issue also announces the 2015 NFRI Award was attributed to Hyeongon Lee, the Deputy Director General of ITER Korea. The award recognizes Prof. Lee's leading work on non-destructive testing technology for ITER and the validation of analysis relating to the ITER thermal shield and assembly tooling.

Read the January issue of NFRI News here.