It all began under Emperor Napoleon III, at the peak of the European industrial revolution when coal, steel and the spirit of conquest ruled the world. In La Seyne-sur-Mer, some 65 kilometres east of Marseille, France, a forge-and-shipyard was busy turning out steam boilers and hulls for cruisers and battleships. A century and a half has passed, yet the company founded in 1856 is still active: the local forge-and-shipyard—now called CNIM—has morphed into a world-spanning industrial group with activities ranging from waste treatment to the design and manufacturing of large industrial systems. Coal has waned, but working with steel, welding and the machining of large and complex components has remained at the core of the company's expertise. The D-shaped radial plates for the ITER toroidal field coils definitely fit into the category of 'large and complex components'—they are big (8.5 x 15 metres), heavy (between 5.5 and 9.7 tonnes) and the machining of their grooves, into which 450 metres of superconducting cable-in-conduit is later inserted, is a highly delicate operation that requires submillimetre precision. In 2009, CNIM signed a contract with the European Domestic Agency to produce a real-size radial plate prototype. Three years later, as part of a consortium with the Italian SIMIC, it was awarded a EUR 160 million contract for series fabrication—a total of 70 radial plates (1) to be shared equally between the two companies. Last week on 23 May, the last of the 35 CNIM-produced radial plates left La Seyne-sur-Mer for the ASG Superconductors SpA facility in La Spezia, Italy, where the jacketed cable will be inserted into the plate's groves. CNIM managers and personnel, representatives from the ITER Organization, the European Domestic Agency and SIMIC had gathered in the company's large hall to celebrate the culmination of a five-year effort. 'Programs like this one are great accelerators of innovation,' said Philippe Lazare, the CEO of CNIM's Industrial Systems Division. 'We've been constantly 'flirting' with technological boundaries,' confirmed Jean-Claude Cercassi, the Development Director for the ITER program. (1) Japan is procuring another 64 radial plates, corresponding to the plates needed to assemble the nine toroidal field coils under its responsibility (Europe is procuring 10 toroidal field coils). Click here to read a detailed report on the website of the European Domestic Agency.

In ITER, six technological solutions for tritium breeding—in the form of test blanket modules plus associated ancillary systems—will be operated and tested for the first time. Their experimental validation will represent a major step for fusion development beyond ITER, when tritium fuel will necessarily have to be bred within the reactor. On 22-24 May 2017, the Committee charged with the governance of the Test Blanket Module (TBM) Program convened at ITER Headquarters for its seventeenth meeting. The TBM Program Committee, which advises the ITER Council, meets twice a year to review the various aspects of the ITER TBM Program, for instance the procurement of mockups of tritium breeding blankets and their installation and testing in ITER. The Program Committee noted the good progress for the test blanket systems (TBS) within the ITER Organization and the ITER Members. In particular, conceptual designs have been approved for the helium-cooled lithium-lead and the helium-cooled pebble bed breeder TBSs (both developed in Europe), for the water-cooled ceramic breeder TBS developed in Japan, and for the lithium-lead ceramic breeder TBS developed in India. These latest approvals the represent a major step forward for the TBM Program, marking the end of the conceptual design phase for all systems and components and the beginning of the preliminary design phase. Several hours of the meeting were also dedicated to the report from the ITER Member TBM Leaders on the further development of the TBS subsystem design and analyses, on R&D underway on the question of TBM materials, and on manufacturing aspects including mockup testing. Under collaborative agreements with TBM Leaders, Russia and the US are also contributing significant R&D activities and providing general support to the TBM Program. Experimental work is also progressing on the frame and dummy TBM project—components necessary to hosting the test blanket modules within the vacuum vessel and which are under the responsibility of ITER's Tritium Breeding Blanket Systems Section. The work is performed in collaboration with the ITER vacuum team and aims to validate metallic gasket sealing; for this, a dummy TBM flange applicable to all TBM-sets is in the final stages of fabrication. On the issue of the power supply for the test blanket system helium circulators, the Program Committee noted that potential solutions have been identified. In the present design, the helium circulators are supplied with medium voltage power (MV, 6.6 kV), whereas a recent industrial assessment concluded that only a supply with low voltage (LV, 440 V) is acceptable. The required solution needs to take several constraints into account, in particular the need to respect interfaces that have already been frozen (e.g., with buildings, power supply and cable trays). A final decision is planned in the next few months. As captive components, the connection pipes for the test blanket systems are the only elements within the TBM Program required for installation before First Plasma. For this reason, they are subject to a very tight schedule, with planned distributed deliveries in the 2020-2021 timeframe. The most urgent activity to be performed is the final assessment of tritium permeation from the helium coolant pipes in the vault (including shafts) and vault annex—an issue that will require specific design solutions to manage. Other important items addressed during the three days were the integration of TBS operations into the revised ITER research plan accounting for the staged approach of ITER; and the report that has been made on the TBM program safety demonstration and on the management of TBM radwaste. Dedicated working groups are active on both of these important issues (with the participation in the latter of Agence Iter France). Note: A tritium breeding blanket ensuring tritium breeding self-sufficiency is a compulsory element for a demonstration power reactor (DEMO), the next-step after ITER. Although not required for ITER (since ITER will procure tritium from external sources), among the missions set out for ITER it is included in the Project Specification that 'ITER should test tritium breeding module concepts that would lead in a future reactor to tritium self-sufficiency, the extraction of high grade heat and electricity production.'

It's rare to see all 500 seats of the amphitheatre at ITER Headquarters occupied. But who wouldn't drop pen and paper to run to the cinema when ITER is featured on the big screen? Last Tuesday, the Canadian documentary Let there be light was presented to ITER staff in the presence of film director and producer Mila Aung-Thwin. His 90-minute documentary about the quest for fusion energy has been competing at international film festivals since February, including the Big Sky Film Festival in Montana, where it won the Feature Competition Artistic Vision Award; the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin Texas (see this review from the Houston Chronicle); the CPH:DOX in Copenhagen, Denmark (the first European venue); and, most recently, the Hot Docs Festival in Toronto, Canada. And then it came time to show it to the people the film was about. For Mila, it meant a lot to return to ITER Headquarters where he and his cinematographer Van Royko had spent so much time filming and interviewing, and to await the reaction of the audience during the two screenings held on 23 May. If he had been nervous when the lights went out, there was no need once they were turned on again—the applause was overwhelming and the comments very positive ... even emotional. 'Thank you Mila for this film,' one staff member said. 'I feel so proud to be part of this project!' The film has not been released for public audiences yet, but EyeSteelFilm is negotiating with the international broadcasting stations. So stay tuned! Watch the trailer of the documentary here.

Once again Agence Iter France, the ITER Organization and educational representatives from the Aix-Marseille and Nice regions successfully organized the ITER Robot competition. Much more than just a robotic contest, this fun event not only stimulates young people's interest in engineering and the ITER Project, but also allows ITER—a major economic actor locally—to play a part in the French national education curriculum. Six hundred students from 27 schools participated in the sixth edition, which was held on 23 May at the Lycée des Iscles in Manosque. Organized into 46 teams, students could be identified by their colourful T-shirts as they moved from one test to another during the seven-hour competition, all before the eyes of a particularly attentive jury. Drawing inspiration from the robotic challenges that will be faced at ITER during installation and maintenance activities, the test categories—Ways, Transport, Pick'n Place and Cooperate—demanded a lot of ingenuity from the young competitors. In one of the hardest test activities, miniature robots equipped with sensors had to be able to detect the colour of the wooden blocks they were holding and communicate the information to a second robot, in order for the latter to deposit the piece in the correct area. The students' general knowledge of ITER and fusion were also tested as well as their ability to communicate about their project at their team's stand. ITER Director-General Bernard Bigot was on hand to award the 'Cooperate Prize,' reminding the students that without scientific, technological and human cooperation the ITER Project would not exist. He also underlined 'enthusiasm, imagination, ingenuity, rigor and determination'—all on display at ITER Robots 2017—as essential qualities for the 'dynamism and renewal of our society." Inspired by the growing success of ITER Robots, and in cooperation with Agence Iter France, the national education services in France now provide teachers from all over France with fifty educational modules dedicated to ITER Robots through a digital platform.

In June 1997, the ITER EDA Newsletter—the IAEA publication that chronicled the progress of the ITER Project from 1988 to 1998—published a drawing of the planned layout for the ITER site. Twenty years later, as actual steel-and-concrete structures are sprouting on the ITER site in Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France, the comparison between the 1997 projection and the 2017 reality is quite instructive. In 1997 none of the four project participants (Europe, Japan, Russia and the US) had yet proposed to host the installation. As a consequence, the layout was for a geographic abstraction referred to as the 'generic' site. Günther Janeschitz, currently the deputy head of the ITER's Central Integration Office, remembers that for practical reasons the unofficial topological reference was a site located north of San Diego (a), not far from the San Onofre nuclear plant. The device that was projected at the time was a 'serious reactor-class' machine, much bigger (b) than the one that is being built today and aiming for ignition (c). Its dimensions impacted the size of area planned for the scientific installation (100 hectares versus 42 today) and some (but not all) of the buildings on the site layout. The Tokamak Hall and Pit (1), the Hot Cell Building (4) and the cryoplant (10 and 11), for instance, were planned to be significantly larger. To the north of the Tokamak Hall and Pit, there is a building on the layout that doesn't exist today—one which occupies a surface almost equivalent to that of the Assembly Hall (2). It is the Laydown Hall (3), where big components like the cryostat lid could be laid down to facilitate maintenance. The Control Building (23) is located to the south of the RF Coil Fabrication Building (25)— probably a typo for 'PF' (poloidal field)—and faces the Laboratory Office Building (22). Building 22 was relatively small compared to today's Headquarters building. It was not supposed to accommodate more than 250 people—'the management considered that it was enough to run the whole ITER operation,' says Günther. One building that appears to be 'missing' is the massive three-storey Radiofrequency Heating Building which, today, stands adjacent to the Assembly Hall. In the 1997 layout, it was located inside the Assembly Hall. Halfway between the Radwaste Building (8) and the Site Service Building (24), which now stands near the Radiofrequency Heating Building, is a large cylindrical Steam Plant Fuel Tank (19). What could that have been intended for? 'Baking,' says Günther. 'All tokamaks need to 'bake' their vacuum vessel in order to get rid of impurities and unwanted molecules. At the time, the plan was to use steam at a temperature of 300 °C, but that project was abandoned because of potential corrosion problems.' In today's ITER the baking (at 200 °C) will be done by the water cooling system, with pressurized water heated electrically. There are of course several other differences to be spotted (contributions are welcome!) between today's site and yesteryear's... In July 1997, the ITER Detailed Design Report, which included the ITER site general layout, was validated by the ITER Council at its 12th meeting in Tampere, Finland. Dark clouds however were piling up on ITER's horizon. In 1998, the US left the project ... to return only in 2003. By that time, a new ITER design had matured: the machine was to be smaller, less powerful (down to 500 MW from the original 1,500 MW) and of course less costly for the three remaining members, Europe, Japan and Russia (d). This is the ITER that is being built today. (a) In mid-1992 three 'Joint Work Sites' were established (Garching, Germany; Naka, Japan; and San Diego, US) to facilitate and speed up design work for ITER. (b) 'As vast as Saint Peter's basilica in Rome' used to say Robert Aymar, who headed ITER from 1994 to 1997. The projected machine had a large radius of 8.2 metres as compared to today's 6.2 metres and weighed 70,000 tonnes versus 23,000 tonnes today. As a consequence, the diameter of the enclosing cryostat was 6 metres larger. (c) Ignition occurs when the energy transferred to the plasma by the helium particles is sufficient to maintain the conditions for fusion reactions to occur, without external heating. (d) China and Korea joined in 2003, India in late 2005.

The 27th IEEE Symposium on Fusion Engineering (SOFE 2017) opened on 5 June in Shanghai, China. Close to 500 participants are attending this five-day international conference, organized for engineers and scientists engaged in the development of fusion energy. Held biennially since 1965, SOFE is coordinated by the Fusion Technology Committee of the IEEE/NPSS (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers/Nuclear & Plasma Sciences Society). For the first time in its 52-year history, SOFE is being hosted outside of the United States ... in Shanghai—a tribute to the rapid growth in fusion research and advanced fusion engineering in China. Representatives of major fusion experiments will be giving updates on their projects, including Director-General Bernard Bigot from the ITER Organization (who opened the plenary sessions on day one of the conference with a presentation on the construction and manufacturing status of ITER) and directors from the MAST Upgrade Project (tokamak, UK), JT-60SA (tokamak, Japan), W7-X (stellarator, Germany), EAST (tokamak, China), and LHD (stellarator, Japan) Fusion technology and concepts on the road to DEMO—the step following ITER—will also be given centre stage, with reports on advanced fusion research at IFMIF/EVEDA (Japan/Europe) and European and Chinese DEMO concepts. The ITER Organization has a stand at SOFE 2017. A more complete report of the conference highlights will be published in next week's Newsline.

Lithium compounds improve plasma performance in fusion devices just as well as pure lithium does, a team of physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has found. The research was conducted by former Princeton University physics graduate student Matt Lucia under the guidance of Robert Kaita, principal research physicist at PPPL and one of Lucia's thesis advisors, as well as the team of scientists working on a machine known as the Lithium Tokamak Experiment (LTX). Lucia used a new device known as the materials analysis and particle probe (MAPP), invented at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and installed on LTX. The MAPP system lets scientists withdraw samples into a chamber connected to LTX and study them without compromising LTX's vacuum environment. MAPP lets scientists analyze how tokamak plasmas affect a material immediately after the experiment ends. In the past, scientists could only study samples after the machine had been shut down for maintenance; at that point, the vacuum had been broken and the samples had been exposed to many experiments, as well as to air. Lucia used the evaporation technique to coat a piece of metal with lithium, and then used MAPP to expose the metal to plasma within LTX. As he expected, Lucia observed lithium oxide, which forms when lithium reacts with residual oxygen in LTX's vacuum chamber. He was surprised, however, to find that the compound was just as capable of absorbing deuterium as pure lithium was. 'Matt discovered that even after the lithium coating was allowed to sit on the plasma-facing components within LTX and oxidize, it still was able to bind hydrogen,' said Kaita. Lucia's results are the first direct evidence that lithium oxide forms on tokamak walls and that it retains hydrogen isotopes as well as pure lithium does. They support the observation that lithium oxide can form on both graphite, like the tiles in NSTX, and on metal, and improve plasma performance. Read the full article by Raphael Rosen on the PPPL website. -- Physicists Robert Kaita and Michael Jaworski in front of another PPPL fusion device, the NSTX-Upgrade.