Last week, delegations from the seven ITER Members convened in person in Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France, for the 32nd Meeting of the ITER Council. An important focus of discussion was the performance of the ITER Project and efforts underway to update the project's schedule and cost baseline. The ITER Council meets twice a year, typically in June and November, to review project progress. According to the ITER Agreement, the ITER Council is responsible "for the promotion and overall direction of the ITER Organization" (Article 6). It has the authority to appoint the Director-General and senior staff, to adopt and amend the Project Resources Management and Human Resources Regulations, and to approve the annual budget of the ITER Organization.  During its June 2023 meeting, the ITER Council focused much of its discussions on efforts underway by the ITER Organization, the ITER Domestic Agencies, and selected external experts to propose an optimized, reliable cost and schedule baseline for Council consideration. These efforts include: Recovering from past delays incurred due to the Covid-19 pandemic and technical challenges in completing First-of-a-Kind components; Finalizing strategies and supplier contracts for repairs to key components; Close and effective engagement with the French regulator, Autorité de sûreté nucléaire (ASN), regarding their questions related to the machine assembly 'hold point,' and ensuring mutual alignment on the way forward; Setting clear, scientifically and technically meaningful milestones along the way to full nuclear operation that effectively and transparently communicate the progress of the ITER Project; Considering strategies to offset future risks, including in particular the use of ITER's completed cryogenics plant, following commissioning, for additional testing of toroidal field coils prior to installation; Proposing a change to the plasma-facing 'first-wall' material from beryllium to tungsten; and Planning for an 'Augmented First Plasma,' to enhance the scope and scientific value of ITER's first experimental campaign. "Collectively," the press release states, "these efforts retain ITER's added value to the fusion community, while providing critical information to the burgeoning commercial fusion sector, as well as important safety regulatory insights and lessons learned. As envisioned, these efforts will facilitate ITER's capacity to provide the required safety demonstration to the regulator, and will compress the previously envisioned staged approach to reach ITER's scientific goals as rapidly as possible."  Read the full press release in English and French here.

Over the past twelve years, thousands of people have filed through the ITER gates on the occasion of the biannual Open Doors Days. Initiated in 2011, when construction works had just begun on the ITER platform, the operation offers visitors a unique opportunity to take in the size and scope of the project and discuss progress and challenges with the people who know it best: the experts from the ITER Organization, the European agency Fusion for Energy, and their various contractors. On Open Doors Day, several dozen volunteers are on deck—the ITER Director-General sometimes among them—to guide visitors, answer questions, and share their passion for the unique scientific, industrial and human venture that they are part of. On Saturday 24 June, the day was tailored for the families and friends of project collaborators—an occasion for close to 650 spouses and children, parents and friends to see for themselves the reality that they hear so much about. And the reality was, as always, impressive: oversized crane hooks, dizzying perspectives, and huge components—as 'high as a five-storey building' and as 'heavy as a fully-loaded jumbo jet'—clasped in the wings of giant handling tools. At the Visitors Building experts were on hand to provide explanations, while 'plasmagicians' gave insights into the laws of physics at work in ITER through basic and often amusing science experiments. But better than words, the images in the gallery below will give a sense of what an ITER Open Doors Day is all about. (The next one will be organized for the public on Saturday 25 November 2023.)    

The JET tokamak—training ground to multiple generations of fusion scientists and engineers—celebrated 40 years of science last week. From its first plasma on 25 June 1983 to its record-breaking deuterium-tritium campaign last year, the Joint European Torus (JET) has consistently been at the forefront of cutting-edge achievements, propelling the world's understanding of fusion science. Operated at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (Oxfordshire, UK) as a Joint Undertaking of the European Community since 1977, and operated under the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) since 2000, the machine is used by 4,800 EUROfusion consortium experts, students and staff from across Europe. 'JET stands as an extraordinary testament to European cooperation and international collaboration,' said Tony Donné, EUROfusion Programme Manager, during a ceremony on 23 June. 'For four decades, this collaborative spirit has thrived within JET, serving as an exemplary model for fostering global unity.' Over its lifetime, JET has delivered crucial insights into the complex mechanics of fusion, allowing scientists to plan ITER as well as DEMO—the demonstration fusion power plant currently under design by the fusion community in Europe. Milestones included a first deuterium-tritium campaign in the 1990s that yielded a world record shot (16.1 megawatts and 21.7 megajoules), and a second deuterium campaign in 2021/2022 that produced the world record for sustained fusion energy at high power (50 megajoules over 5 seconds). 'As JET enters its final phase, it remains committed to supporting preparations for the operation of ITER with conclusive experiments this year, before embarking on a transition to become the world's first fusion energy machine to be repurposed and decommissioned,' said the EUROfusion team in its press release. 'The invaluable research by JET will continue to propel the advancement of fusion energy worldwide.' See the EUROfusion press release here. See a commemorative video released for JET's 40th anniversary here.

The workshop organized by the ITER Port Plugs & Diagnostics Division helped to advance the development of the infrared diagnostics that will protect ITER's plasma-facing components. The temperature of the plasma inside the ITER vacuum vessel will reach more than 150 million °C during nuclear fusion. As a consequence, plasma-facing components such as the divertor and the first wall will be subjected to high heat loads—several times higher than those experienced by a spacecraft during reentry through Earth's atmosphere. These plasma heat loads can cause local 'hot spots' on the surfaces of plasma-facing components, with temperatures of hundreds of degrees Celsius potentially resulting in fatigue and damage. In order to ensure the safe and reliable operation of the tokamak, it is necessary to constantly monitor the temperature of these plasma-facing components, and send early warning to operators as soon as the hot spots appear. For this purpose, ITER will have a set of infrared cameras that will monitor a large fraction of the surfaces in question. ITER infrared diagnostics feature a labyrinth of optical components, which will transfer the infrared radiation emanating from the plasma-facing components to cameras located many metres away. Due to the involvement of so many optical components, the occurrence of errors in temperature measurements is inevitable. Further complexity comes from light reflections from tokamak metallic surfaces that can generate false hot spots on the camera images. In addition, the interpretation of the infrared data requires knowledge of the surface properties, which can evolve during plasma operation, causing measurement errors. In order to ensure accurate temperature measurements, the infrared diagnostics will be calibrated before their installation, but also periodically during ITER operation. As the design of the ITER infrared diagnostics progresses, strategies for calibration need to be developed, tested, and incorporated in the diagnostics design and operation plans, taking into account specific ITER requirements and constraints. For this purpose, a workshop on calibration techniques for ITER infrared diagnostics was organized on 5 and 6 June at ITER Headquarters. Gathering more than 40 world experts in infrared diagnostics, the workshop started off with participants sharing experience with the calibration of infrared diagnostics installed in operational fusion experiments such as WEST, JET, Wendelstein 7-X and ASDEX Upgrade. The second part of the workshop focused on calibration strategies for the ITER infrared diagnostics developed by the European, United States and Japanese Domestic Agencies. The workshop addressed pertinent topics such as cross-calibration techniques, calibration standardization, machine learning, the use of in-vessel calibration sources, and the impact of surface material properties on the measurements—invaluable input for the further development of ITER's infrared diagnostics and for increasing the fidelity of the measurements.