Of Interest archive

In line with a First Plasma in 2017, the 41-tonne vacuum vessel of the MAST Upgrade project was returned to its concrete-shielded home in late May, where it can now be refitted with its components and systems before commissioning.

The upgraded MAST tokamak will help to add to the knowledge base for ITER by experimenting with key plasma physics issues.

Watch a short video of the milestone on the website of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (UK).

During the next Symposium on Fusion Engineering (SOFE June 2017), Fusion Technology Awards will be presented for the years 2016 and 2017 to individuals who have made outstanding and innovative contributions to research and development in the field of fusion technology.

The Awards each consist of a USD 3,000 cash prize and a plaque. Any person, regardless of nationality or Society affiliation, is eligible for the award, with the exception that no current member of the IEEE/NPSS Standing Committee on Fusion Technology may be considered. The nomination package should be sent to IEEE Senior Member Martin Nieto-Perez (@email), and it should consist of a nomination letter describing the technical and/or leadership contributions on which the nomination is recommended and a resume from the candidate.

The nomination deadline for the 2016 Award is 15 June 2016.

For more detailed information on eligibility, basis for judging, nomination process and a list of past Award recipients, please visit IEEE_NPSS.org and go to the "Fusion Technology Awards" section.

In a report to the US Congress released on 26 May, the Department of Energy (DOE) recommends "that the US remain a partner in the ITER project through Fiscal Year 2018," at which time the country's participation in the project will need to be reassessed.

"At this time, our continued participation [...] is in the best interest of the nation," writes Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz in the introductory message to the report.

The 17-page report notes that "the management of the ITER Organization and the performance of the project have improved substantially" under Bernard Bigot's leadership. "The project is now being well-run."

However, "the improvements and performance, while promising, still require additional time to determine if they will be sustained and lead to the long-term success of the project."

Despite the accumulated delays "ITER remains the fastest path for the study of burning plasma," concludes the report.

Photo: Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz

Download the DOE report on US participation in ITER here.

The ITER Organization will participate in this year's international symposium Atoms for the Future—the annual meeting of students and young professionals from the nuclear field (more information here). ITER Director-General Bernard Bigot will be among the speakers on 27 June 2016, and two days later students will have the possibility to visit the ITER site in southern France.

Registration for Atoms for the Future also gives you access to the World Nuclear Exhibition (28-30 June 2016) where the ITER Organization will be also be present.

US Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Ernest Moniz dedicated the most powerful spherical torus fusion facility in the world on 20 May 2016. The $94-million upgrade to the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX-U), funded by the DOE Office of Science, is a spherical tokamak fusion device that explores the creation of high-performance plasmas at 100-million degree temperatures.

NSTX-U at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) will allow researchers around the world to explore fusion reactions [...] "The vastly expanded capabilities of this spherical tokamak will enable us to explore new physics regimes and tackle the major engineering problems for fusion energy," Moniz said.

NSTX-U draws on a 65-year-old legacy of fusion energy research at Princeton University's Plasma Physics Laboratory where, in the 1950s, physicist Lyman Spitzer created a machine he called a stellarator to produce energy the same way as the Sun. Experimental stellarators and tokamaks, the two most prominent fusion reactor designs, now dot the globe.

"This is exciting new territory, and we're thrilled to embark on the next frontier of fusion research. This device could transform the world by showing us the way to a pilot plant design for the generation of power from fusion energy for use by all," said Stewart Prager, director, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

Read the full article on the PPPL website.

During an Industrial Info Day on 20 May, the ITER Organization presented an upcoming tender for electrical, cabling, instrumentation and control installation works to the representatives of 30 companies (48 participants).

The ITER Organization will now pre-qualify interested companies before launching the tender.

Industrial Info Days like this one are organized to inform industry about the scope of installation work to be performed under individual contracts and to encourage companies to participate in the tender. Companies have a chance to meet potential partners in Business-to-Business (B2B) meetings, with the aim of building better consortia in order to respond to the scale and challenges of the task. Info Days are also an opportunity for the ITER Organization to listen to industry and to get feedback on its strategy.

A new energy technology "distillate" has been published by Princeton University's Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment on magnetic confinement fusion, a technology with "enormous promise" as a global energy source, according to the authors.

The paper presents some of the basic science relevant to fusion energy and the central technical challenges before addressing the economic prospects for commercial fusion, the differences between fusion and fission, and the politics and progress in the global effort to develop nuclear fusion.

Andlinger Center distillates aim to provide succinct yet substantive information to a non-specialist audience on emerging topics in energy and the environment that combine technological, economic, and policy considerations. This is the third in the series so far.

The full distillate can be downloaded here.

--Photo: a plasma in the Chinese tokamak EAST

On 28 April, the ITER Organization signed a contract with the European consortium GNMS for the procurement of approximately 10 km of vacuum pipework, ranging in diameter from DN 25 to DN 250.

The ITER vacuum system will be one of the largest in the world. Vacuum pumping is required prior to starting the fusion reaction to eliminate all sources of organic molecules and to create low density—about one million times lower than the density of air. The network of pipework will form one of the most extensive distributed systems in ITER, alongside cryogenic and water cooling systems.

The contract signature marks a significant step forward for the ITER vacuum system.

Are you a university graduate who wants to gain international professional experience and contribute to the work of the European Domestic Agency for ITER? Or who is curious about ITER and simply wants to be part of one of the most ambitious energy projects in the world today? The European Domestic Agency for ITER is looking for graduates in engineering, physics, law, human resources, finance and communication for four to nine months beginning 1 October 2016.

The traineeship program is open to university graduates who are nationals of one of the Member States of the European Union or Switzerland, who have at least a three-year university degree obtained within the last three years, and a very good knowledge of English. Traineeships are offered in Barcelona (Spain), Garching (Germany) and at the ITER site in France.

The deadline to apply is 31 May 2016. Please find all information here.

If new energy sources offer cheap, plentiful power to everyone, how will the planet cope? FutureProofing examines a new method of power generation promising clean, limitless power for everyone. Can it work, what are the consequences, and is there a viable alternative?

Fusion has long-promised cheap, clean and limitless power, but over half a century of effort this technology has still not delivered an operational power plant. Now hopes are high that a vast project in the south of France will finally crack the problems and deliver a working model that can be replicated around the world. FutureProofing presenters Timandra Harkness and Leo Johnson travel to Provence to find out what the prospects are for a scheme costing upwards of £10 billion which could transform the energy supply for us all and with it global geopolitics and the environment for centuries to come.

The program explores what viable alternatives there could be to generate power at the same scale for billions of people across the world, and whether such an alternative is a better route to achieving the goal of cheap, plentiful and clean energy for the future. (Producer: Jonathan Brunert)

Follow this link to the 42-minute broadcast.

--By John Greenwald

A promising experiment that encloses hot, magnetically confined plasma in a full wall of liquid lithium is undergoing a $2 million upgrade at the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). Engineers are installing a powerful neutral beam injector in the laboratory's Lithium Tokamak Experiment (LTX), an innovative device used to test the liquid metal as a first wall that enhances plasma performance. The first wall material faces the plasma.

 "This will bring us one step closer to demonstrating this particular approach to fusion," said Dick Majeski, principal investigator of the LTX. The experiment is a collaborative effort that includes researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, UCLA, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Princeton University, as well as PPPL. Funding comes from the DOE Office of Science. 

The neutral beam injector, a Russian-built device on loan from the Tri Alpha fusion firm in California, will shoot energetic beams into the small spherical tokamak to fuel the core of the plasma and increase its temperature and density—key factors in fusion reactions. "The beams will maintain the density and raise the temperature to a more fusion-relevant level," said Philip Efthimion, PPPL head of the Plasma Science and Technology Department that includes the LTX.

The experiment recently became the first device in the world to produce flat temperatures in a magnetically confined plasma. Such flatness reduces the loss of heat from the plasma that can halt fusion reactions.  The LTX also has provided the first experimental evidence that coating a large area of walls with liquid lithium can produce high-performance plasmas.

However, without fuelling from the neutral beam the density of an LTX plasma tends to drop off fast. The beam upgrade will keep the density from dropping, and test whether the liquid lithium coating can continue to maintain flat temperatures in much hotter plasmas.

Read the full story on the PPPL website.

Watch humans and robots work together inside the JET mockup at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) in the UK.

Video via Tom Scott/CCFE

Researchers at the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have challenged the understanding of a key element in fusion plasmas. At issue has been an accurate prediction of the size of the "bootstrap current"—a self-generating electric current—and an understanding of what carries the current at the edge of plasmas in doughnut-shaped facilities called tokamaks. This bootstrap-generated current combines with the current in the core of the plasma to produce a magnetic field to hold the hot gas together during experiments, and can produce stability at the edge of the plasma.

The recent work, published in the April issue of the journal Physics of Plasmas, focuses on the region at the edge in which the temperature and density drop off sharply. In this steep gradient region—or pedestal—the bootstrap current is large, enhancing the confining magnetic field but also triggering instability in some conditions.

The bootstrap current appears in a plasma when the pressure is raised. [...] Physics understanding and accurate prediction of the size of the current at the edge of the plasma is essential for predicting its effect on instabilities that can diminish the performance of fusion reactors.

--Illustration: Simulation shows trapped electrons at left and passing electron at right that are carried in the bootstrap current of a tokamak. Credit: Kwan Liu-Ma, University of California, Davis.

Read the full article on the PPPL website.

Another shipment of in-kind components from India has arrived at the PRIMA neutral beam test facility in Padua, Italy. At PRIMA, ITER's most powerful heating system—neutral beam injection—will be tested in advance of operation. 

The SPIDER test bed is a 1:1-scale ion source that will be used to develop the technology for the production of negative ions. India already delivered the beam dump in late 2014; this time, 13 trucks carried the components of the 100 kV power supply.

Read more about the lastest shipment here.

In its May 2016 issue, Nature Physics has produced an Insight on Nuclear Fusion that features an interview with ITER Director-General Bernard Bigot, a commentary by Steven Cowley (current Chief Executive Officer of the UK Atomic Energy Agency and Head of the EURATOM/CCFE Fusion Association), and a review of the fascinating physics that lies at the heart of nuclear fusion.

A full list of content is available at this link. (Content may be accessed through a subscription to Nature Physics or rental/purchase.)

A senior researcher at MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) in the US is using a gyrotron, a specialized radio-frequency (RF) wave generator developed for fusion research, to explore how millimetre RF waves can open holes through hard rock by melting or vaporizing it.

Penetrating deep into rock is necessary to access virtually limitless geothermal energy resources, to mine precious metals or explore new options for nuclear waste storage. But it is a difficult and expensive process, and today's mechanical drilling technology has limitations. Woskov believes that powerful millimetre-wave sources could increase deep hard rock penetration rates by more than ten times at lower cost over current mechanical drilling systems, while providing other practical benefits.

"There is plenty of heat beneath our feet," he says, "something like 20 billion times the energy the world uses in one year." But, Woskov notes, most studies of the accessibility of geothermal energy are based on current mechanical technology and its limitations. They do not consider that a breakthrough advance in drilling technology could make possible deeper, less expensive penetration, opening into what Woskov calls "an enormous reserve of energy, second only to fusion: base energy, available 24/7."

Current rotary technology is a mechanical grinding process, limited by rock hardness, deep pressures, and high temperatures.  Specially designed "drilling mud," pumped through the hollow drill pipe interior, is used to enable deep drilling and to remove the excess cuttings, returning them to the surface via the ring-shaped space between the drill pipe and borehole wall. The pressure of the mud also keeps the hole from collapsing, sealing and strengthening the hole in the process. But there is a limit to the pressures such a borehole can withstand, and typically holes cannot be drilled beyond 30,000 feet (9km).

Woskov asks, "What if you could drill beyond this limit? What if you could drill over ten kilometers into the earth's crust?" With his proposed gyrotron technology this is theoretically possible.

Continue reading on the PSFC website.

The ASDEX-Upgrade team at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Garching, Germany is experimenting with a new mode of tokamak operation.

In recent experimental results, an operational mode described as offering "stable plasma, high plasma pressure and good confinement properties in a parameter range in which future power plants are to be working" has been achieved almost without the transformer, or solenoid, that is typically used to induce the strong current in the plasma that contributes to creating the magnetic cage of tokamaks like ITER and ASDEX-Upgrade.

In its place, microwaves and particle beams injected close to the plasma core were used to prolong the plasma pulse.

This type of "advanced tokamak operation" was the object of investigation for IPP scientist Alexander Bock, who details the advantages that continuous operation would have over pulsed operation as part of his PhD thesis. Advantages included better control of the plasma current profile in the plasma, longer pulses, and decreased turbulence.

Read the IPP press release in English or in German.

EUROfusion, the coordinating body for fusion research activities in Europe, is seeking student writers to contribute to the summer issue of Fusion in Europe.

If you possess strong writing skills, are curious, and can explain complex science with compelling metaphors, please send in your writing samples to this address by 16 May 2016.

Find out more about the program here.

On April 6, 2016, the largest-scale nuclear industry exhibition in China opened its doors and the ITER Project was there.

For four days, the actors of the global nuclear industry gathered in the National Convention Center in Beijing for the 14th China International Nuclear Industry Exhibition. One of the themes of the conference was "Fusion & Plasma Technology Applications."

The Chinese Domestic Agency for ITER (ITER China) was invited to participate by one of the sponsors of the event, the Chinese Nuclear Society. At its 36 m² stand, complete with graphic display boards, model exhibits and promotional videos, the public was given a comprehensive introduction to the ITER Project, the status of domestic fusion research and development, and the specific contribution of China to ITER.

The Director-General of the ITER Organization, Bernard Bigot, and the head of the Korean Domestic Agency, Kijung Jung, both visited the ITER stand, as well as representatives from institutes, universities, and suppliers involved with fusion at home and abroad.

--By Raphael Rosen

Scientists at the US Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have helped design and test a component that could improve the performance of doughnut-shaped fusion facilities known as tokamaks.

Called a "liquid lithium limiter," the device has circulated the protective liquid metal within the walls of China's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) and kept the plasma from cooling down and halting fusion reactions. The journal Nuclear Fusion published results of the experiment in March 2016.

This system reduces the production of impurities that typically are created when the plasma reaches other components of the vessel. Moreover, plasmas tolerate higher amounts of lithium impurities, compared with the impurities from other materials, because the low atomic number of lithium produces very low amounts of plasma radiation that typically cools the plasma core.

Serving as the main point of contact with plasma enables the lithium to absorb the hot deuterium ions that drift from the centre of the plasma, and keeps them from striking the interior walls of the tokamak and cooling down. Limiting the amount of cool deuterium at the edge of the plasma reduces the difference in temperature between the hot plasma centre and the cooler edge, and reduces turbulence. As a side note, however, contact with the ions was found to slightly damage the thin stainless steel foil surface of the limiter device, prompting work on an improved design.

Read the full report on the PPPL website.

Photo of the white-hot limiter glowing in contact with the plasma during an EAST discharge.