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Norbert Holtkamp
Welcome back and Happy New Year; I trust you all had a restful and enjoyable holiday.

Sadly, 2009 ended with a tragic incident. On 20 December, our colleague Arturo Tanga and his wife Beatrice were killed in a traffic accident while standing at their car. The news left us all in shock. They are survived by three daughters. The loss of Arturo and Beatrice can not be adequately expressed in words. For those of us who knew Arturo, he was a friend, a colleague, a teacher, an outstanding researcher, and a leader. He was one of the very first ITER staff to work at Cadarache. His enthusiasm for his profession knew no limit, and in that spirit he spent a good part of his life with us. We will remember him exactly that way ... and we will miss him.

The year that is beginning will require—again—our focus and energy, but will also have its share of tangible result. Next Wednesday, the European Domestic Agency "Fusion for Energy" will celebrate the signing of the contract for the first building to be constructed on site: the more than 200 metre-long winding facility for ITER's poloidal field magnets. In the course of the year, we will also see work beginning on the excavation of the Tokamak Pit. Manufacturing of ITER components is being launched around the globe; in the most recent news, Korea reports that it has chosen the manufacturer for its share of the vacuum vessel.

It is up to us to deliver. By the end of February, we will be presenting a refined schedule to the ITER Council. We are working closer together than ever with the Domestic Agencies and their industries directly to mitigate the risks that were identified by some parties during the last Council meeting and to arrive at a schedule that is acceptable to all ITER Members. In its next meeting (18-20 January), the Technical Advisory Committee will listen to representatives from European industry and discuss strategies for further schedule acceleration. Defining the schedule is a necessary step before we can finalize the cost, and subsequently the overall Baseline for the project.

A big step forward towards consolidation was taken last November with the Council's approval of the additional cost for almost half the items that resulted from the design review (EUR 400 million); the rest will be addressed at the Council meeting in June 2010. As you remember, during the design review some major updates and improvements of ITER's design were proposed, for example resulting in the modification of the hot cell and the decision to build a test facility for the neutral beams—just to mention a few.

The coming months thus remain challenging. We will have to do the work with the staff we have on board so far, as we have arrived at our foreseen staffing level for the moment. I'd like to conclude by extending a warm welcome to all newcomers who joined the project this week. With you, and the Domestic Agencies, together we will make even more progress in 2010!

A condolence book has been opened.
It is with great sadness that we announce the death of our colleague Arturo Tanga. Arturo and his wife Beatrice, also a physicist, were both killed in a accident on Sunday 20 December. A young man from a village near Sisteron crashed into the couple that had just returned from a Sunday hike. Arturo and Beatrice were standing next to their parked car, about to stow hiking gear into the trunk, when the approaching car lost control and careened into them. Their youngest daughter Tilly, twelve years old, witnessed the accident from the car.

Arturo Tanga dedicated his entire career to fusion research and was an outstanding scientific figure in the field. He started his career in 1979 at the FT Tokamak in Frascati and subsequently spent 17 years at JET where he became Group Leader of the Physics Operation Group. He moved to IPP Garching, Germany in 1999 and was one of the very first ITER staff members to work at Cadarache, arriving in August 2007. Arturo was the Division Head responsible for heating and current drive systems, neutral beams, ion cyclotron heating and electron cyclotron heating. Arturo was internationally recognized as a physicist of the highest stature with numerous publications in journals in the fields of optics, solid state physics and tokamak physics. His vast experience and scientific brilliance were of immense benefit to the ITER project. He will be greatly missed.

Arturo and his wife are survived by three daughters, Martina, Silvia and Tilly.

On behalf of ITER staff and the world fusion community, I offer my most sincere condolences to his daughters and all family members on their terrible loss.

Note from the editor: Many people have sent their condolences in response to this tragedy. A condolence book has been placed in Arturo's office, building 519, room 006. Please feel free to contribute.


The solid steel plate now waits for further testing trials in a Tore-Supra workshop. Craig Hamlyn-Harris opens the wrap for the photographer.
The development of materials and technologies for application in ITER is a challenge. In the ITER vacuum vessel, for example, 40 millimetre-thick shielding plates made out of borated stainless steel (type 304B7) with about two percent boron content will be used for neutron shielding. However, it is quite a technological challenge to manufacture borated steel plates of that thickness at an industrial level, because steel with high boron content easily becomes hard and brittle.

Boron has been widely used in the nuclear industry because of its neutron absorption capability. High neutron absorption capability combined with sufficient mechanical properties and corrosion resistance make borated steel an attractive material. If you manage to overcome its brittleness.

In recent tests performed under an ITER R&D contract, the Austrian company BÖHLER Bleche GmbH & Co KG, has now proved it possible. Several trials have been performed to optimize the technological process to avoid crack formation and to achieve the required mechanical properties and the surface quality. Two plates have been produced and are now waiting in a storage room in Cadarache for further tests.

Prince Albert II of Monaco will visit ITER on Tuesday 12 and meet the "Monaco Fellows," whose fellowship is financed by the Principality.
On Tuesday, 12 January, Prince Albert II of Monaco will visit ITER. He will be greeted by ITER Director-General Kaname Ikeda at the Château de Cadarache, will tour the ITER platform and meet the "Monaco Fellows"—the five postgraduate students whose fellowship is financed by the Principality.

Concern about climate change and clean energy is what arouse the Prince's interest in the ITER Project. In January 2008, the ITER Organization and the Principality of Monaco signed a Partnership Arrangement that provides for a EUR 5.5 million contribution to the project over a period of ten years.

The donation will be used to finance five postdoctoral fellowships every two years and an annual international conference on ITER-related research. The first of these conferences is scheduled to be held in Monaco in September 2010.

The address that the Prince will pronounce on Tuesday will be accessible for all ITER staff through a dedicated Internet link. It will then be posted in the next issue of Newsline.


Magnet Systems Manager John Miller will be retiring at the end of this month.
Two management changes have been announced at the US ITER Project Office. Magnet Systems Manager John Miller will be retiring, effective at the end of January. Wayne Reiersen, USIPO Systems Engineer, will serve as Interim Magnet Systems Manager to help prepare for an upcoming US Department of Energy review and while an international search is conducted to replace John.

Wayne joined the US ITER Project Chief Engineer's Group after holding several engineering management positions at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, including work with the National Compact Stellarator Experiment, KSTAR, and TPX projects.

Wayne Steffey has been promoted to the position of Project Controls Manager, succeeding Suzanne Herron. He comes to the role with 24 years of education and experience in project management, including previous assignments at the Spallation Neutron Source, Data Motion, and World Computer Systems.

In making the announcements, US Project Director Ned Sauthoff expressed his appreciation to John for his dedicated service to the project and congratulated "the two Waynes" on their appointments.

Assembled as soon as they're delivered: out of a total of 144, some thirty modules have already been assembled. Work should be complete by early June.
Chances are that JWS3 will look a lot like JWS2. The new building that is being assembled next to the ITER Headquarters uses the same modules and the same building techniques, and its interior decoration will be very similar.

There will be a few differences though: return on experience at JWS2 has led to modifications in the organization of the workspaces. There will be fewer offices opening into the inner courtyards and more meeting rooms. Coffee machine rooms, as well as meeting rooms, have been moved to locations where noise will cause the least disruption.

Of 188 total modules, each weighing 8 to 9 tonnes,some thirty have already been delivered to the site and assembled. Completing the work will take another six months.

The ground floor will host approximately 100 ITER staff, thus partly solving the "housing crisis" at ITER. The upper two floors will be the realm of F4E, and accessed through a welcome desk.

Providing office space for some 300 people implies an extension of parking facilities. The small lot directly facing the HQ building will have a further two rows of parking spaces that will be taken from the platform contractor area, and a new lot will be created to the east of the new building.

A rotogate-type passage will be opened into the fence facing the platform to provide F4E with controlled access to the contractors' area. The inauguration of JWS3 is scheduled for 10 June.

Timothy Watson has been appointed Head of the CCS Office, replacing Jerry Sovka who retired in December 2009.
Tim Watson's schedule isn't likely to slow in the coming months. As Deputy Head of the Civil Construction & Site (CCS) Office since arriving at ITER in November 2007, he's been carrying out the day-to-day management of the office at ITER that is in charge of the preliminary design work as well as the oversight of design and construction for all infrastructure and buildings on site.

This week, he was appointed to the top position in CCS, replacing Jerry Sovka who retired last month.

"My job will be a challenging one," says Tim. "We'll be turning over the last of the preliminary designs to the Architect/Engineer soon to be appointed by the European Domestic Agency, Fusion for Energy (F4E), in April. We are also in the midst of preparing the fifth and final 'buildings and site' Procurement Arrangement for signature."

Tim holds a civil engineering degree from University College London, and a PhD in rock mechanics from Nottingham University. He worked with a large civil engineering consultancy firm in London in the early 1990s, spending part of his time on major underground infrastructure projects in Hong Kong. At CERN for ten years, he was Deputy Head of the Civil Engineering Group in charge of all civil engineering work for the Large Hadron Collider including preliminary design, construction design, and the management of outside contracts. "The LHC project was similar in many ways to ITER," Tim recalls. "We managed four large design contracts and five large construction contracts with a small core team. Thirteen nationalities were represented in the external teams."

Before joining ITER, Tim lived in Australia for close to five years, where he was director and part-owner of a geotechnical engineering firm, specialized in large civil engineering and mining projects as well as project management consultancy. He holds dual citizenship in Australia and the UK.

Tim foresees a change of focus for the CCS Office in the year to come. The beginning of construction on the platform will mean more time spent on site—something Tim looks forward to. From the preparation of preliminary designs, the Office will be moving toward the monitoring and verification of design and construction. The Office will also be assisting the F4E and Architect Engineer teams in their requests for information, as they take possession of new JWSIII office space on the ITER site.

A large order for Tim, the twelve other permanent CCS staff members, and the supporting staff from Jacobs Nucléaire who provide technical support through a long-term framework contract with CCS.

Korea is to build two out of the nine sectors for ITER's vacuum vessel.
Hyundai Heavy Industries has been selected to manufacture the Korean share of ITER's vacuum vessel. The scope of the seven-year contract encompasses two entire vacuum vessel sectors, seventeen equatorial ports and nine lower ports. Formal signing of the contract is to take place later this month.

Along with the superconducting magnets, the vacuum vessel is one of the major long-lead procurement items needed for ITER. Without delivery of the vacuum vessel on schedule, construction of ITER cannot successfully be performed on time. The contracting for the vacuum vessel and port construction thus has major significance for the project's progress.

Monaco today: 200 hectares, 30,000 inhabitants (among them fewer than 6,000 Monégasque subjects) and a worldwide reputation.
Prince Albert II, who will visit the ITER site on Tuesday 12 January, rules over the second smallest sovereign country in the world—the first one being the City of Vatican.

The Principality of Monaco is about half the size of Central Park in New York. Its population barely exceeds 30,000 inhabitants, among which less than 6,000 are Monégasque subjects.

This little kingdom by the sea, located 18 kilometres to the east of Nice, was established in the late 13th century. With the exception of a 25 year period during and after the French Revolution, it has always been ruled by the same family. This makes the Grimaldis of Monaco the oldest reigning dynasty in the world.

Despite its size, the Principality of Monaco enjoys the rights of a full-fledged independent state: it is a member of the United Nations, with full voting rights; it exchanges ambassadors with some thirty capitals; and mints its own euros. Monaco doesn't have an army, but a 520-man police force—the highest per-area and per-capita ratio in the world.

The Principality's economic development was spurred in the 1860s when Prince Charles III decided to create a casino in the "ward" of Spélugues, soon renamed "Monte-Carlo" to sound more elegant.

Mild Mediterranean climate, low business taxes— and no taxes at all for Monégasque subjects—the glamour of the Grimaldi dynasty and high profile social and sport events have all combined to attract the rich and famous to the "Rock of Monaco."

Being almost embedded inside French territory, the Principality has a "special relationship" to France. Until a new constitution was promulgated in 2002, the head of Monaco's government, the "Minister of State," was a French senior civil servant. Since 2002, the Minister of State can be chosen among the Monégasque subjects. Despite this provision, the present Minister of State is Jean-Paul Proust, former Prefect (1997-1999) of the PACA region and Bouches-du-Rhône Department.

In the constitutional monarchy of Monaco, it is the Prince who holds the executive power. Albert, born in 1958, the second child of Prince Rainier III and American actress Grace Kelly, acceded to the throne in 2005, at the death of his father.

Since Prince Albert I, who pioneered the then new science of oceanography and founded the world-renowned "Oceanographic Institute" in Monaco in 1889, passion for science and the environment runs in the family.

The Principality of Monaco's Partnership with ITER is the most recent expression of this commitment.

© Lesénéchal/CEA
In 2009, exactly 11,575 people came to visit the ITER construction site where they were welcomed and accompagnied by the staff from Agence Iter France. A record number of visitors was registered on 17 October 2009 when the CEA Cadarache celebrated its 50th anniversary and more than 1,400 families, employees and neighbours took the chance to stand on the very spot where ITER will soon take shape.