The ITER Newsline

Ministerial representatives reaffirm the importance of ITER

Wed, 11 Sep 2013 12:41:06 +0000

Early on Friday 6 September, as the Ministerial representatives from seven ITER Members converged towards Saint Paul-lez-Durance, the day dawned bright and sunny. Ideal conditions for a historic ITER Council Ministerial-Level Meeting...

In November 2006, following the signature of the ITER Agreement in Paris, Ministers had come together to mark a first, crucial moment in Project history—the signature of the international treaty establishing the legal entity to be responsible for the construction, operation and decommissioning of ITER.

Last week's Ministerial-level meeting intervened at another crucial moment. The Project is now in full construction, component fabrication is underway around the world, and the first completed components will be delivered to the site in 2014.

For the seven ITER Members, it was the occasion to reiterate at a high level the common effort towards the realization of ITER and to reaffirm the importance of fusion and the role of ITER in the current energy context.

The meeting was convened at the initiative of Günther H. Oettinger, European Commissioner in charge of Energy and representative of the European Atomic Energy Community. Representing France as Host to the ITER Project was French Minister of Higher Education and Research, Geneviève Fioraso. For both dignitaries, it was their second visit to ITER this year (see Newsline's report on the inauguration of the ITER Headquarters in January).

Commissioner Oettinger, Minister Fioraso and ITER Director-General Osamu Motojima were joined by Ministerial-level representatives from each ITER Member (see box below). First on the official program was a site tour that brought the guests within metres of the impressive Seismic Pit where work is underway on the foundations for the Tokamak Complex—the infrastructure that will house the ITER Tokamak.

_To_59_Tx_Before the official photograph, Commissioner Oettinger welcomed all the participants. "I think it is important to hold this type of high-level meeting to talk about the problems we encounter and discuss our common challenges," he affirmed.

"We are so excited to have so many important guests today," declared ITER Director-General Motojima to the 40 or so members of the press that had joined the tour. "We are happy to show the spectacular construction progress achieved in the past couple of years and would like to express our gratitude for the confidence shown to the Unique ITER team by the Members."

The ITER Council Ministerial-Level Meeting was opened by Council Chair Hideyuki Takatsu. Then, in accordance with the rules of procedure of the Council, Commissioner Oettinger was elected as Chair for the duration of the meeting. In his opening address, he told the Members that he was "...glad to note that important steps have been taken towards strengthening the working relations between the ITER Organization and the seven Domestic Agencies."

On behalf of the Host State, Minister Fioraso also delivered words of welcome to the assembly, including many journalists, stressing that for France, "ITER represents a unique and outstanding project ... the broadest international cooperation for research ever implemented."

All photos © ITER-Organization - Gérard Lesénéchal

Read more on the outcome of the Ministerial-Level Meeting in the press release (English or French).

See the photo gallery of the event here.

Watch a video of the Ministerial-Level Meeting here.

Around the manufacturing world in 3 minutes

Wed, 11 Sep 2013 11:21:59 +0000

The manufacturing of ITER components is underway in factories all around the world.

This short video, presented by ITER Director-General Motojima to the representatives of the seven ITER Members, took the guests to the locations where action is happening ... to superconductor production lines, to vacuum vessel welding trials and to a newly built test facility where the plasma-facing components are exposed to extreme heat loads.

Fasten your seatbelt for a three-minute voyage around the world ...

"I'm convinced that our success will grow"

Wed, 11 Sep 2013 12:36:42 +0000

When he came to ITER on 17 January 2013, European Commissioner for Energy Günther H. Oettinger took a solitary stroll into the Tokamak Pit, away from officials and the media, touching the smooth concrete of the seismic plinths as if to assess the reality of the Project and the "impressive amount of work" that had already gone into ITER construction.

Last Friday, 6 September, the plinths and seismic pads were no longer visible. Formwork and rebar for the B2 slab—the actual floor of the Tokamak Complex—hid them from view and made strolling impossible. As one newspaper article pointed out the following day, "the ITER Tokamak Pit now looks like a conventional worksite."

As Commissioner Oettinger stood with other invited guests at the edge of the Seismic Pit, however, the view was striking: the large circular rebar at the centre of the Pit where the 23,000-ton machine will sit; the towering walls; the forest of rebar that is going up on either side for the Tritium and Diagnostic buildings.

"This is a historical undertaking," said the Commissioner, addressing the media. "Our visit here is sending a clear, positive message to all those working for ITER."

The Commissioner stressed the progress that has been made to date, adding, "Our Project is now well into the Construction Phase. I'm convinced that our success will grow..."

During the ITER Council Ministerial-Level Meeting that took place minutes later in the Council Chamber on the fifth floor of Headquarters, the Commissioner sought to "personally thank ITER Director-General Osamu Motojima and his staff for the remarkable work that we were able to witness on our tour of the site."

The Commissioner also mentioned the "many positive developments for which the ITER Organization and the ITER Members should be commended."

At the press conference that followed the meeting, Commissioner Oettinger insisted once again on the historical, one-of-a-kind nature of the Project, adding that he, as well as all the ITER Members, acknowledged the inherent challenges, notably as regards schedule and cost containment.

"France is fully committed to ITER"

Wed, 11 Sep 2013 12:39:02 +0000

Geneviève Fioraso, the French Minister of Higher Education and Research, speaks of ITER with passion. In interviews with the media or in addressing her ministerial colleagues, her words are strong and her tone enthusiastic.

"The huge, amazing amount of work" that is going into ITER impressed her no less last Friday than it did on her first visit to ITER on 17 January 2013, when she came to Saint Paul-lez-Durance to inaugurate the ITER Headquarters building alongside European Commissioner Günther H. Oettinger.

She sees ITER for what it is today: "A unique and outstanding project, the broadest international cooperation for research ever implemented." But she also sees beyond, as she stated in an interview to French public TV France 3, asserting that ITER and fusion are "the solution to what I consider the largest challenge of this century—providing energy that is environmentally responsible, that does not generate carbon dioxide like the fossil fuels we are tapping today."

The minister also reaffirmed that France, as Host Country, is "fully committed to ITER" and she formally announced to her ministerial colleagues that "France [had] achieved all of its commitments within budget and schedule."

Her last words, as she stepped into her car to leave ITER Headquarters, were: "You can be absolutely confident in the support of the French government."

Different words, different languages, same message

Wed, 11 Sep 2013 12:57:48 +0000

They said it in different words and they said it in different languages. But it all came down to the same message: ITER is complex, ITER is challenging, but we need ITER and we are confident in its success.

The press conference that followed the Ministerial-Level Meeting gave European Commissioner Oettinger, ITER Director-General Motojima and every Head of Delegation an opportunity to put ITER into context and explain the challenges the project is facing.

All agreed that, in the words of one Head of Delegation, "witnessing the progress of construction as we did this morning is an important element in understanding and assessing the Project."

The press conference was attended by some twenty different media, among them TV crews from France, Russia and Korea (approximately 40 journalists in all). Newspaper headlines the next day were exceptionally positive—in the spirit of this banner on the front page of the area's regional daily La Provence: "World unites around ITER."

Three cities, two Procurement Arrangements

Tue, 03 Sep 2013 08:36:51 +0000

During the week of 26 August, ITER Director-General Motojima travelled to Russia, visiting three cities and signing two Procurement Arrangements in four days.

Accompanied by Deputy Director-General Alexander Alekseev, head of the Tokamak Directorate, the ITER Director-General began his trip at the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Novosibirsk, where he signed the Procurement Arrangement for Equatorial Port 11 Engineering, for the engineering of diagnostic systems into vacuum vessel Port 11. The Budker Institute will be responsible for the scope of work.

The Budker Institute already plays a key part in the development of high-tech electron equipment, engineering of diagnostic systems into the vacuum vessel ports, and research into the investigation of high-temperature plasma impact on reactor's first wall materials as well as developing, manufacturing, and testing equipment for the ITER machine.

According to the Head of the Russian ITER Domestic Agency, Anatoly Krasilnikov, equipment development for ITER's plasma diagnostics engineering will take five to seven years and will require constant interaction with the ITER Project's other partners. In all, the Budker Institute will develop five engineering systems for ITER's vacuum vessel ports.

The delegation from ITER also visited the Institute of Applied Physics and the enterprise GYCOM in Nizhniy Novgorod, where gyrotron component manufacturing and assembly are conducted as well as the development of infrastructure equipment such as cryomagnetic systems, measurement and technological devices, and part of the energy sources required for the gyrotrons. Procurement of the ITER gyrotrons is a matter of special pride to the Institute of Applied Physics, because it was here that this device was invented. More than half of existing experimental fusion facilities in the world currently use gyrotrons from Nizhniy Novgorod.

The final destination stop was in Moscow. At Project Center ITER (the Russian Domestic Agency for ITER), Director-General Motojima signed the Procurement Arrangement for the Thomson Scattering diagnostic system, one of 21 systems that Russia will deliver to ITER before 2024.

Manufacturing milestone achieved in Europe

Tue, 03 Sep 2013 08:35:44 +0000

The first step in the fabrication of the full-size, superconducting prototype of a toroidal field coil double pancake has been successfully carried out in Europe. Winding was completed at the beginning of August at the ASG premises in La Spezia, Italy.

The European Domestic Agency, Fusion for Energy, is responsible for procuring ten toroidal field coils (and Japan, nine). These D-shaped coils will be operated with an electrical current of 68,000 amps in order to produce the magnetic field that confines and holds the plasma in place. Toroidal field coils will weigh approximately 300 tons, and measure 16.5 m in height and 9.5 m in width.

Each one of ITER's toroidal field coils will contain seven double pancakes. These double pancakes are composed of a length of superconductor, which carries the electrical current, and a stainless steel D-shaped plate called a radial plate, which holds and mechanically supports the conductor through groves machined on both sides along a spiral trajectory.

The first stage of toroidal field coil manufacturing—the winding of the double pancakes—is the most challenging. It consists of bending the conductor length along a D-shaped double spiral trajectory. As the conductor must fit precisely inside the radial plate groove, it is vital to control its trajectory in the double pancake and in the groove of the radial plate with extremely high accuracy. The trajectory of the conductor, in particular, must be controlled with an accuracy as high as 0.01 percent.

For this reason, the winding line employs a numerically controlled bending unit as well as laser-based technology to measure the position and the dimensions of the conductor. The winding takes place in an environment with a controlled temperature of 20 °C +/-1 C, at an average speed of 5 m of conductor per hour.

For the European commitments to ITER, a consortium made up of ASG (Italy), Iberdrola (Spain) and Elytt (Spain) will manufacture the full-size, superconducting prototype as well as the production toroidal field coil double pancakes in the future.

The next steps in the manufacturing process are: heat-treatment of the double pancakes at 650 °C in a specially constructed inert atmosphere oven, electrical insulation; and finally the transfer of the double pancakes into the grooves of the stainless steel radial plates. After assembly and the application of electrical insulation on the outside of the radial plate, the module is finally impregnated with special radiation-resistant epoxy resin to form the prototype double pancake module.

Work on the module is scheduled to be completed by the beginning of next year, in time to allow for the prototype to be tested at -77 K in order to assess the effect of the low temperature. The module will then be cut in sections in order to analyze the impregnation of the insulation.

Read the detailed article on the F4E website here.

Burning the candle at both ends

Tue, 03 Sep 2013 08:34:43 +0000

A significant Procurement Arrangement was concluded recently between the ITER Organization and the Japanese Domestic Agency for four key diagnostic systems for ITER.

The Divertor Impurity Monitor is a window to the operation of the divertor, monitoring impurity flows and allowing the optimization of operation. Divertor Thermography gives a detailed view of the heat load profile of the divertor targets—a key diagnostic for the protection of divertor components. Edge Thomson Scattering is used to measure the temperature and density profile of the edge of the ITER plasma, providing useful information in the study of the confinement properties of the plasma edge and for the optimization of fusion performance.

And finally, the Poloidal Polarimeter will measure the plasma current density across the plasma cross-section (the current profile). The details of this profile affect stability and heat transport in the core and must be carefully measured and adjusted to achieve ITER's long pulses.

The signature represents a key milestone for both the Japanese Domestic Agency and the ITER Organization, and an important milestone for the project schedule. The long-distance coordination of the Procurement Arrangement signature went smoothly—the document was first signed by ITER Director-General Motojima, before being transported half way around the world by courier to be signed by T. Oikawa, the Director of International Affairs, Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA).

There were several late nights and early mornings for the teams in both France and Japan. "It's true that the candle had to be burned at both ends in order to achieve the tight schedule," commented Diagnostic Division Head Mike Walsh, "but it was worth all the effort in the end."

Kiyoshi Itami, the Plasma Diagnostics Group Leader in Naka, added, "I am very pleased to get this critical phase in the project completed and I thank everyone involved for the good collaborative approach to get to this stage."

Now the Japanese Domestic Agency is busy with the next stages in cooperation with the ITER Organization and in further involvement with industry.

A huge caterpillar of men and machinery

Tue, 03 Sep 2013 08:34:20 +0000

It's a short ride for an automobile, but it's a long, slow haul for a 352-wheel vehicle carrying an 800-ton load.

It is also a very complex and delicate journey. Organizing the test convoy that will travel the 104 kilometres of the ITER Itinerary during the nights of 16-20 September has required a tremendous amount of planning and coordination.

The Itinerary is a EUR 112 million contribution from France to the ITER Project.

In order to bring about the test convoy, an "enormous technical, administrative and regulatory machine" had to be fine-tuned, according to Pierre-Marie Delplanque, a former French navy Admiral , who is in charge of overseeing operations along the ITER Itinerary for Agence Iter France.

In addition to the two main actors—Agence Iter France and logistic services provider DAHER—planning has involved coordinating dozens of authorities representing four départements, government agencies, specialized technical services and local governments.

This four-night campaign of tests and measurements aims at verifying that the loads—and the stresses they cause to the roads, bridges and roundabouts of the ITER Itinerary—agree with engineering calculations. Such a test operation merges the rigor of methodical scientific survey with the challenges of the Highly Exceptional Load (HEL) convoys that will deliver the largest and heaviest ITER components to the site.

As the test convoy progresses from the shores of the Étang de Berre towards the ITER site in Saint Paul-lez-Durance, hundreds of measurements will be taken: manoeuvring space and operational margins will be assessed, stress on the bridges will be appraised and triple-checked, and behaviour of the transport trailer will be closely monitored.

The test convoy has been sized to mimic the most taxing parameters of the most exceptional ITER convoys: heaviest (it will be made of 360 concrete blocks, for a total of 800 tons), longest (33 metres), largest (9 metres) and highest (10.4 metres). (Of course, during the delivery of ITER components no single load will cumulate these dimensions.)

Although a "dress rehearsal" will be organized in the coming months, the convoy will also provide an opportunity to test part of the logistics that will be involved in the actual HEL convoys.

The September convoy, like the 230 convoys that will be spaced over five years for ITER, will travel in a "bubble" containing some 20 vehicles and stretching more than 100 metres along the road.

The 46-metre-long trailer carrying the dummy load will be preceded by French gendarmerie motorcycles, a pedestrian gendarmerie escort leader, guiding motorcycles, a pilot car transporting the Head of Convoy and an emergency tractor to pull the trailer in case of engine breakdown. The transport trailer will be followed by a rear-escort as well as an assistance van and further gendarmerie motorcycles. Additional personnel and vehicles will be mobilized to remove the traffic signs before and after the passage of the convoy.

When actual operations begin, in June 2014, the elite Garde Républicaine motorcyclist, flown down from Paris, will seal the "bubble" that encapsulates and protects the convoy—exactly as it does every summer when the Tour de France travels some 3,500 kilometres throughout the French provinces...

The passage of such a huge caterpillar of men and machinery, hauling a load whose weight is equivalent to two Boeing 747s filled to capacity, will certainly attract large crowds of onlookers. Two dedicated areas have been organized along the Itinerary to accommodate the public.

For the local residents, it will be the first, spectacular, contact with ITER. But as roads are closed, albeit temporarily and only at night, this first convoy may also be perceived by some as a nuisance.

Some 86,000 people live in the small towns and villages located along the ITER Itinerary. And because approximately 200 kilometres of detours will have to be organized to divert regular road traffic (not mentioning the temporary closing of the thruway on two locations), several thousands more will be impacted.

This is the challenge within the challenge: the operation will also be a test of how the local population reacts to the convoys that will become a regular (almost weekly!) fixture for the five years to come.

Melting tungsten for a good cause

Tue, 03 Sep 2013 08:36:11 +0000

Over the past two years ITER physicists and engineers, along with many scientific colleagues within the fusion research community, have been working to establish the design and physics basis for a modified divertor—the component located at the bottom of the huge ITER vacuum vessel responsible for exhausting most of the heat and all of the particles which will continuously flow out of ITER's fusion plasmas.

Our current Baseline begins plasma operations with divertor targets armoured with carbon fibre composite (CFC) material in the regions that will be subject to the highest heat flux densities. After the initial years of ITER exploitation, in which only hydrogen or helium will be used as plasma fuel producing no nuclear activation, this divertor is to be replaced. The replacement—a variant of the first component but fully armoured with tungsten—would be the heat and particle flux exhaust workhorse once the nuclear phase, using deuterium and then deuterium/tritium fuel, begins.

In 2011 the ITER Organization proposed to eliminate the first divertor and instead go for the full-tungsten ("full-W") version right from the start. This makes more operational sense and has the potential for substantial cost savings. By June 2013, the design was at a sufficiently advanced stage and we were confident that the necessary tungsten high heat flux handling technology was mature enough to invite external experts to examine our progress during the full-W divertor Final Design Review.

But making a choice to begin operations with tungsten in the most severely loaded regions of the divertor is not just a question of having a design ready to build.

Tungsten, a refractory metal with high melting temperature (3400 Celsius), is a much more difficult material than carbon when it comes to handling very high heat loads and running the plasmas which ITER will require to reach good fusion performance. Why? For two principal reasons: as a metal, tungsten will melt if the heat flux placed on it is high enough; also, as an element with high atomic number it can only be tolerated in minute concentrations in the burning plasma core.

Carbon, on the other hand, does not melt but sublimes (passing directly from solid to vapour) and is low atomic number, so can be tolerated in much higher quantities in the core plasma. Unfortunately, carbon is a difficult option for ITER nuclear phase operations as a result of its great capacity for swallowing up precious tritium fuel and efficiently trapping it inside the vacuum vessel. Tungsten retains fusion fuel only at comparatively low levels.

Why is melting such a problem? Because a melted metal surface is no longer the flat, pristine surface which is installed when the component is new. One of the ways the ITER divertor is able to handle the enormous power flux densities which will be carried along the magnetic field lines connecting to the target surfaces is to make the target intersect the field lines at very glancing angles, so that the power is spread over a wider surface. But a small angle means that any non-flat feature on the surface will receive a higher-than-average heat flux and can be further melted, producing a cascade effect.

The ITER full-W divertor design goes to great lengths to make sure that there is no possibility—on any of the many thousands of high heat flux handling elements—of an edge sticking up (for example, as a result of mechanical misalignment) that could overheat and begin to melt under the relentless bombardment these components receive during high power operation. However ITER's size means that it will have the capacity to reach a value of stored energy in the plasma more than a factor of 10 higher than the largest currently operating tokamak, JET (EU). When some of this energy is released in a rapid burst (for example due to very transient magnetohydrodynamic events such as ELMs), some melting is possible—even if all edges have been hidden by clever design.

We intend to stop this happening as much as possible by applying ELM control techniques, but occasional larger events cannot always be excluded. So one of the big physics questions we have tried to answer over the past two years is: what exactly happens when a burst of energy, sufficient to melt tungsten, strikes our divertor targets?

Until recently we had only rather complex computer simulations with which to establish the physics design specifications. One of the main worries was not just that energy bursts could roughen up and damage divertor component surfaces, but that the very rapid melting induced by the burst could lead to the expulsion, or spraying, of micro-droplets of tungsten back into the plasma leading to intolerable contamination and a decrease in performance.

The computer simulations say this shouldn't happen, but the process of melt ejection is so complex that experiment is the only sure test. But how to test the behaviour under conditions which only ITER can create? Well, as far as tokamaks are concerned, the only place where this was even conceivable was at JET, in which natural ELM energy bursts can be generated at levels similar to those expected for controlled ELMs in ITER. The problem is that these comparatively benign transients will not melt a tungsten surface!

In an experiment proposed and planned jointly between JET and the ITER Organization over the past two years, a small region of one of the full-W modules in the JET divertor was carefully modified to create a situation which every divertor designer would do anything to avoid—a deliberately misaligned edge.

The JET divertor modules are made up of about 9,000 small tungsten plates ("W lamellas"), bound together by a complex spring loading system. The lamellas are only 5 mm wide and about 60 mm long with 1 mm gaps between neighbouring elements. For the experiment, a few lamellas were machined to make a single element stand up out of the crowd, presenting an edge of about 1.5 mm on average to the plasma in one of the hottest zones of the divertor.

The result: reassuringly unsurprising! Although there was some evidence suggesting the occasional ejection of very small droplets from the melted area, there was very little impact on the confined plasma. As the ELM plasma bursts repetitively melted the edge of the misaligned lamella, the molten material continuously migrated away from the heat deposition zone, accumulating harmlessly into a small mass of re-solidified tungsten (see video at left, courtesy of EFDA-JET). The JET plasmas with 3 MA of plasma current were able to produce ELM plasma pulses very similar to the lowest amplitude events we need to guarantee for 15 MA operation in ITER—a fact which makes the experiments very relevant from a plasma physics point of view.

Much more analysis is required to see how the results can be matched quantitatively by simulation, but the observations are clearly in qualitative agreement with theory. That's the most reassuring part: that physics codes used to assist in component design for ITER tomorrow can be validated on experiments performed today. We will have to wait another year now for the damaged lamella to be retrieved from JET before the full picture of these important experiments can be completed, but this is already extremely valuable physics input for the important decisions coming up later this year with regard to our divertor strategy.

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

Mon, 26 Aug 2013 16:45:02 +0000

It's that time of year again. With the last days of August upon us and a busy September just around the corner, it's a good time to stop and take measure of the evolution of the ITER Organization. The 2012 ITER Organization Annual Report, just released, recounts one year in the life of the ITER Project—the highlights in every technical department, the organizational challenges faced (and the solutions set into motion), and milestones in construction and manufacturing.

In 2012, the ITER project entered the third year of its Construction Phase. The ground support structure and seismic isolation system for the future Tokamak Complex was completed, work began on the site of the Assembly Building, the ITER site was connected to the French electrical grid, and part of the ITER team—approximately 500 people—moved into the completed Headquarters building.

The year 2012 was also witness to the accomplishment of a major licensing milestone when, in November, ITER became the world's first fusion device to obtain nuclear licensing.

The project made a definitive shift in 2012 from design work and process qualification to concrete manufacturing and production. To match this important evolution, the 2012 Annual Report introduces a new feature—the last pages of the report (pp. 40-48) are now reserved for reports from the Domestic Agencies. How is the procurement of ITER systems divided among the Domestic Agencies? Where are activities for ITER taking place in each Member? What percentage of work has been signed over by the ITER Organization in the form of Procurement Arrangements? And, finally: What major manufacturing milestones were accomplished in 2012?

The ITER Organization 2012 Annual Report and 2012 Financial Statements are available online at ITER's Publication Centre.

3,000 sensors for detecting the quench

Thu, 29 Aug 2013 15:38:46 +0000

A robust detection system is under development to protect the ITER magnets in case of quenches—those events in a magnet's lifetime when superconductivity is lost and the conductors return to a resistive state.

When cooled to the temperature of 4.5 Kelvin (around minus 269 degrees Celsius), ITER's magnets will become powerful superconductors. The electrical current surging through a superconductor encounters no electrical resistance, allowing superconducting magnets to carry the high current and produce the strong magnetic fields that are essential for ITER experiments.

Superconductivity can be maintained as long as certain thresholds conditions are respected (cryogenic temperatures, current density, magnetic field). Outside of these boundary conditions a magnet will return to its normal resistive state and the high current will produce high heat and voltage. This transition from superconducting to resistive is referred to as a quench.

During a quench, temperature, voltage and mechanical stresses increase—not only on the coil itself, but also in the magnet feeders and the magnet structures. A quench that begins in one part of a superconducting coil can propagate, causing other areas to lose their superconductivity. As this phenomenon builds, it is essential to discharge the huge energy accumulated in the magnet to the exterior of the Tokamak Building.

_To_57_Tx_Magnet quenches aren't expected often during the lifetime of ITER, but it is necessary to plan for them. "Quenches aren't an accident, failure or defect—they are part of the life of a superconducting magnet and the latter must be designed to withstand them," says Felix Rodriguez-Mateos, the quench detection responsible engineer in the Magnet Division. "It is our job to equip ITER with a detection system so that when a quench occurs we react rapidly to protect the integrity of the coils."

"A quench is not an off-normal event," confirms Neil Mitchell, head of the Magnet Division. "But we need a robust detection system to protect our magnets, avoid unnecessary machine downtime, and also as a safety function to discharge large stored energy and avoid damage to the first confinement barrier—the vacuum vessel."

Quench management will be a two-fold strategy in ITER: first quench detection, then magnet energy extraction. The time between detection and action has to be short enough to limit the temperature increase in the coil and avoid any damage. "We have on the order of 2-3 seconds to detect a quench and act," says Felix.

The primary detection system—called the investment protection quench detection system—will monitor the resistive voltage of the superconducting coils (there is also a secondary detection system, see box below). Why the voltage? "Whereas during superconducting operation the resistive voltage in a coil is practically zero, a quench would cause it to begin to climb," explains Felix. "By comparing voltage drops at two symmetric windings for instance, the instruments will detect variations of only fractions of a volt."

Above a threshold level, these variations trigger a signal that is sent to the central interlock control system. In order to avoid unnecessary machine downtime, specific signal processing is required within the quench detection system to discriminate the resistive voltage from the inductive one due to the variations of the magnetic field—that is, to distinguish "true" signals from "false."

_To_58_Tx_"The Tokamak environment will be a very noisy one for our instruments—that's one of the challenges of quench detection in ITER," says Felix. "The difficulty will be to cull out false triggers while at the same time not allowing a real quench to go undetected," says Felix. "We have tried to build enough redundancy into the system so as to minimize false signals. We don't want to discharge the coils and lose machine availability if we don't have to."

If a quench is confirmed, the switches on large resistors connecting coil and resistors are thrown open and the magnetic energy of the coil is rapidly dissipated, avoiding any damage to the coils. For the toroidal field coils that have the largest amount of stored energy, 41 GJ, achieving total discharge can take about one a half minutes.

To detect the start of a quench in any part of the magnet system, voltage measuring instruments (over 3,000 sensors) will be integrated at regular distances onto ITER's coils, feeding bus bars, and current leads. Following the Manufacturing Readiness Review for coil instrumentation last December, the Magnet Division is currently in the phase of preparing over 20 individual tenders (~EUR 25 million). The instruments imply a variety of components and technologies to compensate inductive signals. Much process and material development has gone into the design of these systems.

In addition, an R&D collaboration has been underway at the superconducting Korean tokamak KSTAR since 2009 to learn more about compensating the electromagnetic fields. ITER is collaborating with the KSTAR magnet team to gather information on the electromagnetic signals picked up by the superconducting cables during plasma disruptions. This data will assist the ITER team in designing compensation systems to separate the electromagnetic noise of a disruption from a quench.

"Quench detection in ITER is the most challenging around," concludes Felix, who has approximately 25 years of experience in the field. "At the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), for instance, we were working with faster detection times. But in ITER, there will be a tremendous amount of interference for the instruments to sort through—electromagnetic noise, swinging voltages, couplings, perturbations. At ITER, we are also dealing with higher current, bigger common mode voltages, and larger stored energy. We'll be pushing quench detection and protection to the limit of technology today."

US-made drain tanks expected on site in mid-2014

Thu, 29 Aug 2013 14:17:15 +0000

Drain tank fabrication for ITER's tokamak cooling water system is progressing steadily under the leadership of US ITER, which is managed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the US Department of Energy. The drain tanks will be among the first major hardware items shipped to the ITER site in France. The US production timing will accommodate the installation sequence for the ITER fusion facility.

Joseph Oat Corporation, a sub-contractor to AREVA Federal Services based in Camden, New Jersey, has begun fabrication activities for four 10-metre-tall, 78 metric ton drain tanks and one 5-metre-tall, 46 metric ton drain tank. Another industry partner, ODOM Industries in Milford, Ohio, is fabricating the ten tank heads as a sub-contractor to the Joseph Oat Corporation.

ODOM will ship each tank head as it is fabricated, and will complete delivery to Joseph Oat Corporation by the end of 2013. Joseph Oat, which specializes in industrial fabrication of pressure vessels and heat exchange technologies, expects to stagger completion of drain tanks throughout the summer and fall of 2014.

"Because the tanks are so large, the ITER Organization will install the tanks one at a time and do so before the neighboring building is constructed," Chris Beatty, US ITER tokamak cooling water systems engineer, said.

Beatty noted that the Hot Cell building will permanently block access to the drain tanks in the Tokamak Complex once the ITER facility is complete. The tanks, which are built to last 40 years, are expected to perform beyond the duration of the ITER project.

The tokamak cooling water system includes over 20 miles of piping in an intricate network that wraps around the ITER Tokamak. The primary cooling water system is responsible for transferring heat from Tokamak hardware to the secondary cooling system. The tokamak cooling water system also supports operations such as the baking of in-vessel components, chemical control of water provided to client systems, and draining and drying for maintenance.

"There are many ways to cool a reactor, but ITER uses water to cool the internal parts," said Juan Ferrada, US ITER tokamak cooling water senior systems engineer and technical project officer.

When the water isn't being used for operations, such as cooling the system through the network of pipes, it can be stored in the four large drain tanks that hold up to 63,000 gallons of water each. Two 78-ton tanks are reserved for normal maintenance and operations. During maintenance, the smaller, 46-ton tank will store coolant for the neutral beam injector that pelts high-energy atoms into the Tokamak to heat the plasma.

The other two 78-ton tanks, known as the safety drain tanks, are primarily used for storage in case water should leak into the vacuum vessel. Because fusion reactions use tritium and the plasma-facing wall is made of beryllium, the safety tanks are designed to hold water with radioactive particles such as dust, tritium and activated corrosion products.

The pressurized, stainless steel drain tanks must meet French regulations, giving these US fabricators the opportunity to gain experience implementing French regulations for nuclear pressure equipment.

"Compliance with French nuclear pressure equipment regulations is new to most manufacturers in the US," says Glen Cowart, US ITER quality assurance specialist. "In addition, tank fabrication must meet the ITER Organization's requirements as well as engineering and quality criteria established by AREVA Federal Services and US ITER."

"We have to make sure our design criteria meet the French regulations so the tanks can be used for ITER nuclear operations in France," Beatty explains.

Following approved designs, the tanks are being fabricated out of stainless steel plates. Typical plates are 2.7 metres wide and nearly 10 metres long, with each plate weighing over 8.5 tons. The design requires that each tank have two hemispherical heads—comprised of a curved top cap and a base, fabricated from six segments (called petals) that are welded together. Joseph Oat has begun bevelling and welding the plates, and rolling them into a cylindrical shape. The caps and base will then be welded to the cylindrical body to form the approximately 6-metre-diameter tanks.

Although the drain tanks are simple equipment from an engineering standpoint when compared to many parts of ITER, their sheer size and weight, in addition to being the first set of US ITER-provided equipment fabricated under the French nuclear regulatory framework, make the fabrication and delivery process extremely demanding.

"Even moving the plates is time consuming," Beatty said. "It takes about an hour to move them from the bevelling machine to where they will be welded. Once they're welded, the plates are even larger, so it can take half a day just to flip them over."

Once the tanks are completed, approved for nuclear pressure safety and delivered to the ITER site in France, they will pose one more challenge: Positioning the heavy tanks inside the Tokamak Complex. To meet this challenge, plans are already in place for using specialized air pads to manoeuvre the tanks to their permanent home in the ITER facility.

See the original article on the US ITER website.

The dream of his life

Mon, 26 Aug 2013 16:45:20 +0000

ITER owes much to a few. At different moments in the history (and prehistory!) of the project, a handful of individuals made moves that were to prove decisive. Among this band of godfathers—whether scientists, politicians, diplomats or senior bureaucrats—Umberto Finzi stands prominently.

Finzi, who retired from the European Commission in 2004 but continued to advise the Director General of Research until the conclusion of the ITER negotiations in 2006, belongs to the generation who embraced fusion research in the early 1960s at a time when plasma physics was still in its infancy.

A physicist turned bureaucrat—he was called to Brussels to take care of setting up JET in 1978 and was appointed Head of the European Fusion Programme in 1996—Finzi played a key role in the negotiations that led to building ITER in Europe. An ITER godfather in his own right, he nevertheless insists on the "collective action" that, under four successive European presidencies, led to this decision.

Time has passed. The "paper project" whose roots go back to the late 1970s, years before the seminal 1985 Reagan-Gorbatchev summit in Geneva, is now a reality, as tangible as it is spectacular. When he toured the ITER worksite on 30 July, Umberto Finzi took the full measure of the progress accomplished since his last visit in 2006, when all there was to see was a hilly, wooded landscape and a high pole marking the future location of the Tokamak.

"During most of my professional life," he said, "ITER was a dream. You can imagine my emotion seeing these tons of steel and concrete. This reminds me of the famous message by Hergé¹ to Neil Armstrong: "By believing in his dreams, man turns them into reality."

"ITER is a difficult venture," he added, "and difficult ventures requiretime and patience. The effort is not only scientific or technological. It lies also, and maybe essentially, in the planning and coordination."

ITER, with 35 participating nations, could have been a Tower of Babel. "On the contrary," says Finzi, "it is the exact opposite of a Tower of Babel, a beautiful demonstration of worldwide understanding. No project has ever associated so many different nations. To me, this is the most important aspect of ITER, a historical dimension that reaches beyond the project's scientific and technological objectives."

(1) Hergé (1907-1983) was a Belgian cartoonist, creator of the world-famous characters Tintin and Snowy. Between 1930 and 1986, Hergé published 23 albums of The Adventures of Tintin, selling a total of 200 million copies in 70 languages. Fifteen years before Neil Armstrong, Tintin, Snowy and other recurrent characters in the series walked on the Moon in the 1954 album "Explorers on the Moon."

Korean contract advances neutral beam ports

Mon, 26 Aug 2013 16:45:11 +0000

The Korean Domestic Agency signed an important contract in July for the fabrication of neutral beam port in-wall shielding with Korean supplier Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., LTD (HHI). Through this contract, installation of the in-wall shielding into the port stub extensions will begin in mid-2015 with fabrication completed by early 2016. Hyundai Heavy Industries is also manufacturing two sectors of ITER vacuum vessel as contractor to the Korean Domestic Agency, as well as seventeen equatorial ports and the nine lower ports

The vacuum vessel's neutral beam ports are composed of a connecting duct, port extension, and port stub extension. The spaces between the inner and outer shells of the port extension and port stub extension are filled with preassembled blocks called in-wall shielding. The main purpose of in-wall shielding is to provide neutron shielding for the superconducting magnets, the thermal shield and the cryostat.

In order to provide effective neutron shielding capability with the cooling water, 40-millimetre-thick flat plates (steel type 304B4) are used in almost all areas of the volume between port shells.

In-wall shielding is composed of shield plates, upper/lower brackets and bolt/nut/washers. Pre-assembled 368 in-wall shielding blocks will be assembled into the neutral beam port extension and port stub extension during port fabrication, while 160 field joint in-wall shielding blocks will be assembled after field joint welding on the ITER site. The total net weight of all neutral beam in-wall shielding approximates 100 tons.

Ki-jung Jung, Director-General of the Korean Domestic Agency, commented during the signature: "ITER Korea takes very seriously the demands of the vacuum vessel schedule and quality requirements by ITER."

ITER featured on BBC Evening News

Mon, 19 Aug 2013 16:14:57 +0000

On Wednesday 7 August, BBC world ran a feature on ITER in their evening news program. Science Presenter David Shukman and his team had spent two full days on the ITER site investigating about "the world's most ambitious attempt to harness fusion as a source of power"...See the video to hear his conclusions.

A call to arms for making fusion happen

Wed, 24 Jul 2013 18:01:37 +0000

To the members of the wider fusion community, the name Dan Clery most likely rings a bell. News editor for the magazine Science since 1993, Dan has closely followed the excitement and frustrations of the quest for fusion energy and, of course, the "making of" ITER. Over the years he has gathered more than enough information to fill regular magazine pages and so he decided to, temporarily, swap the fast beat of a news reporter for the reclusiveness of a book author.

A Piece of the Sun draws the bow from the Big Bang, to Prometheus, to the first scientists working out the details of the fusion reaction, the first machines and experiments, and finally to modern times. None of this is new and may have appeared before in print, but don't be mistaken! Dan is not only an eloquent writer, but also a skilled journalist with a mission. In his hands, the book is far more than a technical narration of the good old days: it is a political statement ... a rousing call to arms for making fusion happen.

"The world energy industry is worth trillions of dollars—divert only a tiny fraction of that into researching fusion and we will soon know if it is workable," Dan passionately argues. "Some technological dreams just take time to come to fruition," he writes, drawing the parallel with the Wright brothers and Virgin Galactic's spacefaring pleasure aircraft. "The cost and time it will take to make fusion work has to be balanced against the enormous benefits it will bring. It won't damage the climate, won't pollute and it won't run out. How can we not try?"

Read an interview of Dan Cleary on the PPPL website.

Summer postcards from the ITER worksite

Tue, 23 Jul 2013 18:27:04 +0000

Pair of safe hands to handle up to 1,500 tons

Wed, 24 Jul 2013 13:14:25 +0000

Fusion for Energy (F4E), the Domestic Agency managing Europe's in-kind contribution to ITER, has signed a contract with the NKMNOELL-REEL consortium formed by NKMNoell Special Cranes GmbH, Germany and REEL S.A.S., France (part of Groupe REEL) for the design, certification, manufacturing, testing, installation and commissioning of the four cranes that will be used to assemble the Tokamak, as well as the Tokamak cargo lift that will move the casks containing components. The budget of the contract is in the range of EUR 31 million and it is expected to run for five years.

The cranes will be located within the Tokamak Building and the Assembly Building and will operate like a pair of safe hands to move the heavy components between the two areas and position them during assembly with extreme precision. The consortium will deliver two 750-ton cranes that, in tandem, will lift up to 1,500 tons during assembly, two 50-ton auxiliary cranes, and the Tokamak cargo lift.

Sophisticated engineering combined with advanced safety lifting and remote handling technologies are some of the elements that describe the nature of the work undertaken by the two companies.

How will the cranes work?

The four electric overhead travelling cranes will move between the Assembly Building and the Tokamak Building, which is divided in two areas housing the Tokamak and a crane hall above the machine.

The major heavy lifting requirements shall be met by the two 750-ton cranes. Each will be equipped with two trolleys carrying a single 375-ton hoist each. In total, the four 375-ton hoists will provide a maximum lifting capacity of 1,500 tons—the weight of 187 London double-decker buses. The cranes shall be capable of working in tandem to provide a fully synchronized lift and precise positioning. Two auxiliary cranes of 50-ton capacity will be used for other lifting activities, working independently of one another.

Which components?

The principal purpose of the Tokamak crane system is to lift and receive heavy components, support assembly operations, move the cryostat components, and transport the assembled vacuum vessel sectors and other major components. When the Tokamak machine becomes operational there will be no further planned use for the cranes. The 750-ton cranes will remain parked and electrically isolated while the 50-ton cranes will continue to be used in the Assembly Building.

How will the Tokamak cargo lift work?

The Tokamak cargo lift shaft will be located in the Tokamak Building with connecting doors to the Hot Cell. The lift will carry the casks that contain machine components. The cask is 3.7 metres high by 2.7 metres wide and 8.5 metres long—the approximate size of a London double-decker bus, weighing 60 tons when empty. Automated transfer systems and high tech remote handling systems will be deployed to transfer the casks between the various levels of the Tokamak Building and the Hot Cell by remote control. All components involved in the transfer need to be integrated in a seamless manner.

Bracing for a busy September

Tue, 23 Jul 2013 23:29:06 +0000

The summer recess at ITER (the site will be closed the week of 12-18 August) will be followed by a flurry of activity.

On 6 September, on the initiative of Günther Oettinger, European Commissioner in charge of Energy, representatives at ministerial level of the seven ITER Members will convene at the ITER Headquarters to review the main progress accomplished. This will be the second time in the project's history that the highest-level government representatives of the seven ITER Members meet; the last time was 21 November 2006, on the day after the signature of the ITER Agreement.

Ten days later, the first technical tests will be performed on the ITER Itinerary. Organized jointly by Agence Iter France (AIF) and the DAHER Group, the operation will consist in verifying that the engineers' calculations agree with the reality of travelling the whole length of the Itinerary (104 km) with a convoy that mimicks the most exceptional ITER loads — 800 tons in weight, 40 metres in length, 9 metres in width, and 11 metres in height.

The "measurement campaign," as it is officially called by AIF, will be performed at night negociating the 16 roundabouts and crossing the 30 bridges that punctuate the Itinerary. The vehicle — an 88-axle self-propelled platform — will remain stationary during the day in order not to interfere with the heavy summer traffic. The public will be able to share in the spectacular event from two specifically designed viewing areas, one in Berre l'Etang where the platform will be stationed on 16 September and one in Peyrolles where it will arrive two days later.

In order to confirm that the organization among all involved entities is appropriate, a complete dress rehearsal, with all the logistics of an actual Highly Exceptional Convoy, will be organized in the following months. The first supersized ITER components (the US-manufactured drain tanks) should be delivered on site in June 2014.

As it has for the past six and a half years, Newsline will continue to report on all the events, large and small, that make the daily life and history of ITER.

We'll be back with more news on 26 August!

India will participate in upper port plug manufacturing

Tue, 23 Jul 2013 18:23:29 +0000

ITER-India and the ITER Organization signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the Common Manufacture of Port Plugs on 16 July 2013 during the Unique ITER Team week at ITER. This MoU enables the participation of India in the common manufacture of the upper port plug that includes the Generic Upper Port Plug (GUPP) and applicable customizations. ITER-India is responsible for providing Upper Port No. 9 Integration components, of which Upper Port Plug No. 9 is one of the components.

The main functions of the upper port plug are to hold the diagnostics in position, shield diagnostics from neutron streaming and act as the first closing boundary at the vacuum vessel port flange. This upper port plug will be a stainless steel structure of nearly 6 metres in length and a little more than 1 metre in width and height, weighing approximately 25 tons.

Registration now open for MIIFED 2013 in Monaco

Mon, 05 Aug 2013 10:16:41 +0000

Whether you are an engineer full of ideas, an industry player looking for global business opportunities, or a fusion researcher wanting to keep up-to-date on the latest ITER achievements and developments, the 2013 Monaco ITER International Fusion Energy Days (MIIFED) offer an excellent opportunity for exchanging views and experiences, while forming valuable international business relationships.

MIIFED will be held on 2-4 December 2013 in the Principality of Monaco, under the high patronage of H.S.H. Prince Albert II.
This international conference will present the latest progress of the ITER project and also the major scientific and technological developments in the field of fusion and energy worldwide. The aim is to encourage synergies between energy-related research and technology developments.

Together with the exhibition, the different conference sessions will facilitate learning, networking and partnering with other research actors.

The following high level speakers have already accepted to contribute to MIIFED 2013:

His Serene Highness Prince Albert II
Yukiya Amano, Director-General, IAEA
Bernard Bigot, Chairman, CEA
Jean-Jacques Dordain, Director-General, European Space Agency
Charles Elachi, Director, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA
Masako Inoue, Director, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Japan
Madhukar Kotwal, Member of the Board, Larson & Toubro, India
Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, former Director-General, CERN
Umberto Minopoli, President, Ansaldo Nucleare, Italy
Osamu Motojima, Director-General, ITER Organization
John Parmentola, Senior Vice-President, General Atomics, USA
Hideyuki Takatsu, Chair of the ITER Council
Maria Van der Hoeven, Executive Director, International Energy Agency

Click here to register online.

Русский День at ITER

Wed, 07 Aug 2013 12:42:41 +0000

Do Russians drink vodka for lunch? ITER DDG Alexander Alekseev made the point that they didn't but Vladimir Pozdnyakov, Russia's Consul General in Marseille, said he was "not so sure", suggesting that they might, "just a little bit, on some special occasions..."

Vodka was the only thing Russian that was missing (along with Slavic melancholy) at the celebration of ITER's Russia Day on Friday 19 July. For the rest, it was all there: the food, the songs, the dances, the images of Mother Russia...

More than 600 ITER staff and contractors participated in the event that Olga Star and Igor Sekachev had organized.

Experts on Russian singing and dancing (and there are at least 26 at ITER) assured that the five singers and dancers of Marseille's Alliance franco-russe were among the best they had ever seen.

Vladimir Vlasenkov, Deputy Head of the Russian Domestic Agency, who was participating in the Unique ITER Team week at ITER, said "it [was] not very common, even for [him] to witness such a beautiful expression of Russian traditions."

Click here to view more pictures of Russia Day at ITER.

EAST meets WEST

Mon, 15 Jul 2013 19:49:55 +0000

An Associated Laboratory in fusion was established earlier this month between the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the French Commission of Atomic Energy (CEA) to develop cooperation on two long-pulse tokamaks, EAST and Tore Supra, soon to be equipped with an ITER-like tungsten divertor — the project WEST.

The creation agreement was signed on 3 July by Prof Li, director of the Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP) and Gabriele Fioni, director of CEA's Physics Science Division, CEA, at the French Embassy in Beijing. French nuclear counselor Pierre-Yves Cordier hosted the signing ceremony, with André Grosman, deputy director of the Institute of Magnetic Confinement Fusion Research (IRFM/CEA) and consular assistant Shunming Ding.

The associated laboratory has been created to develop cooperation on CEA's long-pulse tokamak WEST* and ASIPP's EAST, particularly in the fields of actively cooled, metallic plasma-facing components; long-duration plasma operation in an actively cooled, metallic environment; long-pulse heating and current drive; ITER technology support; and the preparation of "Generation ITER" (see this issue's Of Interest entry) in all of the above-mentioned areas.

Xavier Litaudon and Yuntao Song are appointed as the associated laboratory's co-directors. They will be responsible for leading and coordinating the performance of the projects under the Associated Laboratory Agreement.

"I am enthusiastic about the CAS/ASIPP-CEA collaboration," said Prof Li after the signature. "The cooperation between EAST and WEST will be good for all fusion communities."

As a first step, ASIPP has already sent two young researchers to IRFM to work for one year on WEST component design and engineering.

* WEST = W (tungsten) environment for steady state tokamak

Toroidal field coils: strand production passes 400 tons

Mon, 15 Jul 2013 16:04:01 +0000

"Toroidal field strand procurement is going rather well," reports Arnaud Devred, who heads the Superconductor Systems & Auxiliaries Section at ITER. "We are on schedule."

Manufactured by suppliers in six ITER Domestic Agencies—China, Europe, Japan, Korea, Russia and the USA—production of niobium-tin (Nb3Sn) superconducting strand for ITER's toroidal field coils began in 2009 and has now topped 400 tons.

That's more than 80,000 kilometres of strand—enough to go around the world twice at the Equator.

Worldwide capacity has had to ramp up significantly to meet the Project's demand. There are eight qualified suppliers for ITER, including three that are new to the market (one in China, one in Korea and one in Russia). In 2011 and 2012, these eight suppliers, together, turned out over 100 tons annually.

"One hundred tons per annum represents a spectacular increase in the worldwide production of this multifilament wire which was estimated, before ITER production, at a maximum of 15 tons per year," says Devred. "As you would expect, the price has come down, and this 'surge' in production for ITER may well open up new markets."

Eighteen toroidal field coils will be produced for ITER plus a nineteenth (a spare). That's approximately 420 tons of strand, give or take a bit of spare material planned by each Domestic Agency. The production curve will begin to flatten in 2013 (see graph above) as contracts are brought to a close in several Domestic Agencies.

Devred estimates the market value of the toroidal field strand procurement at over EUR 200 million.

"It has been very satisfying to see this procurement unfold and to watch our international collaboration develop at every step in the process," says Devred. "In addition to the sheer scale of this procurement, what is also remarkable is the quality control and quality assurance that we have been able to set into place."

Four of the ITER suppliers are using a production technique called internal tin, while another four are using a bronze process. "It has been up to us to demonstrate that we can control both types of production within technical requirements," explains Devred, "We weren't sure of ourselves since this is the first time there has been such a large-scale production of internal tin. Test data shows that we can do it effectively."

Quality testing for ITER calls for statistical process control on critical parameters, systematic low-temperature measurements on strands, and regular low-temperature measurements on full-size conductors (25 percent of toroidal field conductor unit lengths are tested). This testing data is stored, like manufacturing data, in ITER's conductor database, which is currently fed by approximately 150 users, including suppliers and Domestic Agencies. Some 350,000 individual objects are stored in this web database—created to monitor the quality assurance/quality control processes of the conductor Procurement Arrangements.

Devred credits the "early days" with setting up the processes and systems that are proving to work today for conductor procurement: before the signature of the first ITER Procurement Arrangement, the specifications for ITER conductors were written by a committee made up of worldwide experts in large conductor procurement. Very tight quality control was developed that imposes many control points at each stage of fabrication verified by the Domestic Agencies and the ITER Organization. "I believe this will be the key to our final success," says Devred. "I am confident that what is coming off of the manufacturing lines is as good as can be made."

Read more on how strand is produced in Newsline 140.

Thirty four and counting

Mon, 15 Jul 2013 16:03:49 +0000

It was foreseen by the authors of the ITER Agreement, signed in 2006 by the seven ITER Members.

As a research organization, the ITER Organization may conclude scientific collaboration agreements with other international organizations and institutions in the interest of promoting cooperation on fusion as an energy source.

For ITER, collaboration agreements keep ITER scientists and engineers in close touch with work going on in precise domains relating to fusion science and technology; for the laboratories and institutes, they are an opportunity to collaborate with the fusion community's most advanced experiment.

Since January 2008, the ITER Organization has signed 34 scientific collaboration agreements and another 4 are currently in the preparatory stages. A common thread amongst these agreements is the training of young researchers.

"In the coming years, I envision more and more of this type of scientific exchange for the ITER Organization," says the Director-General of the ITER Organization, Osamu Motojima. "I would like to open ITER's door to younger people who will in fact take on a lot of the responsibility for fusion in the future. ITER will be the foremost research laboratory for magnetic fusion. Scientific collaboration agreements enrich the experience of our scientists, and provide training for the next generation of fusion scientists. The ITER Organization is a Centre of Excellence in this area."

Under these scientific collaboration agreements, the ITER Organization and research institutes can cooperate in academic and scientific fields of mutual interest. "Some of the ideas for collaboration come from our scientists. We have compiled a database of agreements signed by the ITER Organization so that when we're approached, we can inform them whether we already have an agreement with the institute in question," says Anna Tyler of Legal Affairs.

Typically, the agreements cover the following type of collaboration: joint supervision of students working on Master's or PhD theses; joint training and exchange of young scientists, engineers, interns and experts; joint research projects (particularly in plasma physics); and joint seminars.

Collaboration agreements have been signed with laboratories and institutes in Austria , China France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Monaco, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Japan, and the UK—the most recent to date was signed just last month with the Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering at the University of Pisa (Italy).

David Campbell, head of ITER Plasma Operation Directorate, has been able to see the practical benefits of such exchanges. "Because we are aiming to develop ITER as centre of excellence in fusion research, such agreements allow us to develop scientific and technology exchanges with leading fusion research institutions around the world, building a network of fusion research activities which not only supports the preparations for ITER operation, but also contributes to the longer-term realization of the potential of fusion energy.

One of the more exciting aspects of the collboration agreements relates to the training activities and the opportunities they provide for younger researchers to participate in the ITER Project, according to Campbell. "The transfer of knowledge between generations is a key element of the scientific enterprise and an integral component of the development of ITER as an international centre of fusion research."