Keeping it cold
For keeping your coffee warm, there's nothing like a thermos—an ingenious and simple device invented at the end of the 19th century. In between the two walls of a thermos, a vacuum provides the thermal insulation that keeps your hot drink hot. And what works for the high end of ...
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In the forges of ITER
Men of the Iron Age, long before the term was coined, accidently discovered that by adding a bit of carbon to molten iron, a harder and more durable metal was created—steel. Three thousand years have gone by and steel is still at the centre of our civilization. World production p...
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Fusion and fiction
In 1985—the very year that a collaborative international project in fusion was proposed by General Secretary Mikhail Gorbatchev to President Ronald Reagan—fusion made a discreet but noteworthy appearance in a film that would be seen by millions around the world: Back to the Futur...
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The lightest of the 'heavy' loads
The voyage got off to a start in mid-November in the industrial port of Ulsan, Korea—more than 9,000 kilometres from the ITER site. Two months later, in January 2015, the 'freight' was delivered to ITER. The last two legs of the trip were the most delicate: unloading from the con...
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Assembly Building pillars, climbing ever higher
As ITER components arrive on site, their first stop will be the cleaning facility at the entrance of the Assembly Building. Then, in the vast hall of the Assembly Building, they'll be verified and—if necessary—pre-assembled before transfer to the Tokamak Pit for integration in th...
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