Of Interest archive

​The EAST Tokamak team at the Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP), has won the 2013 National Science and Technology Progress Award for its years of unremitting innovation and teamwork. This comes after winning a prize in 2008 for the successful construction and commissioning of EAST.  

This top annual Chinese award recognizes advancements in the natural sciences, technological innovation and science and technology. Jiangang Li, ASIPP director, accepted the award on behalf of the EAST team in a ceremony on 10 January.

The EAST Tokamak team is one of the three recipients of the Innovation Team prize among the 188 laureates of the 2013 Science and Technology Progress Award.

​The European Commission has launched a prize to reward excellence in innovation in the fusion research program as well as the quality of the researchers and industries involved.

Participants are free to submit an application for any physics or technological innovation developed within the European Fusion research program that has demonstrated market potential.

An independent jury appointed by the European Commission will evaluate the proposals and rank the first, second and third place winners who will receive EUR 15,000, 10,000 and 5,000 respectively. Winners will be announced at the SOFT conference in September 2014.

For more detailed information on general conditions and eligibility, click here.

​The Oxford City Deal investment into hi-tech research laboratories and businesses in Oxfordshire, announced this week, was particularly good news for Culham Centre of Fusion Energy, operated by the UK Atomic Energy Authority. A major element of this initiative sees the UK government investing £7.8 million (with matching funds from industry) into a remote applications facility, to be based at a brand new building at Culham.

The facility is part of a broader programme of activities in automated and remote handling and is planned to be built in 2015 and operating in 2016. It will enable CCFE and partner organisations (National Nuclear Laboratory, The Welding Institute Technology Centre, National Physical Laboratory and Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre) to offer their expertise in remote interventions and autonomous systems to a wider commercial sector.

[...]

With the addition of expertise from the project partners, including remote and autonomous working in challenging environments and remote welding techniques, the new centre will offer industry access to an unparalleled concentration of test facilities and expertise to develop and apply technology of remote applications. [...] Fusion research will benefit from the centre as well. Building on CCFE's considerable expertise in remote handling, the centre will enable ever more complex remote handling techniques to be perfected — essential for the efficient and reliable performance of maintenance tasks in the harsh environment inside ITER. And the centre will support CCFE's intention to host one of the design centres for DEMO — the demonstration fusion power reactor expected to follow ITER. 

Read the full article here.

​The fourth issue of NFRI News was released in January. Click on the link below for the latest news from Korea on research in plasma science and fusion energy.

At the end of January, the National Fusion Research Institute (NFRI) presented Kiswire Advanced Technology (KAT) with a plaque in appreciation of its outstanding contribution to the ITER Project.

In November 2013, Korea became the first Domestic Agency to complete the production of niobium-tin (Nb3Sn) strand for ITER's toroidal field conductors. In four years, the manufacturer KAT fabricated 93 tons of Nb3Sn strand—completing the full Korean contribution to ITER toroidal field conductors.

​Nearly 30 years after the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity, many questions remain, but an Oak Ridge National Laboratory team is providing insight that could lead to better superconductors.

Their work, published in Physical Review Letters, examines the role of chemical dopants, which are essential to creating high-temperature superconductors — materials that conduct electricity without resistance. The role of dopants in superconductors is particularly mysterious as they introduce non-uniformity and disorder into the crystal structure, which increases resistivity in non-superconducting materials.

By gaining a better understanding of how and why chemical dopants alter the behavior of the original (parent) material, scientists believe they can design superconductors that work at higher temperatures. This would make them more practical for real-world wire applications because it would lessen the extreme cooling required for conventional superconducting material.

Read the full Press Release here.

​The hopes for fusion power ride on the success of the next big international experiment, ITER. So when it comes to keeping ITER running safely, nothing is being left to chance. CCFE is using the latest computer modelling techniques to predict 'worst case scenarios' for the magnets that will control the plasma of fusion fuel inside the machine; meaning the project team at ITER can ensure their protection systems are ready for anything.

Read more on CCFE website.

​It's all systems go for the upgrade of the UK's fusion experiment MAST after a nailbiting operation to move the entire machine was completed just before Christmas.

In order to refit MAST's magnetic coils, diagnostics, power supplies and a plethora of other systems, the tokamak has had to be stripped down and removed from its machine hall to an assembly area where upgrade work can be carried out. And transporting 25 tonnes of extremely valuable scientific hardware, even a relatively short distance, is no mean feat.

Read more and view a video here.

​ITER China has just launched the English version of its website. Follow this link for procurement news, events and milestones.

Six members of the Korean National Assembly visited ITER on 7 January, accompanied by the head of the Korean Domestic Agency for ITER, Kijung Jung. After a tour of the construction site, which they qualified as "impressive," the delegates were welcomed by ITER Director-General Osamu Motojima who was pleased to have the chance to thank the delegation members for Korea's contribution to the Project and constant support.

​During a recent visit to the Budker Institute in Novosibirsk, Russia, Paul Thomas, CODAC, Heating & Diagnostics Directorate head from the ITER Organization, signed two Complementary Diagnostics Procurement Arrangements with the Deputy Director General of Rosatom, Vyacheslav Pershukov.

The Budker Institute is already heavily engaged in the engineering of diagnostic systems in the vacuum vessel ports following a Procurement Arrangement signed in August 2013.

The year 2014 has been announced as the Year of Fusion by the Russian state corporation Rosatom. Industrial engagement in ITER component manufacturing is ramping up at different locations in Russia; Saint Petersburg will be hosting in June the Fourteenth Meeting of the ITER Council; and in October the 25th Fusion Energy Conference, organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency, will be held in the same city.

Read the full article here.

​Fusion physicist Alex Meakins has posted some striking photographs of plasmas in MAST, caught before the UK's spherical tokamak shutdown for upgrade.

Watch the photographs on Alex Meakins' Twitter account.

​Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) researchers have established the first international 100 gigabits/s connection for German science. It will be the basis of better cooperation in data-intensive sciences in the future. At the SC13 International Supercomputing Conference in Denver, KIT's Steinbuch Centre for Computing (SCC) successfully demonstrated this technology.

"As in an orchestra we have now combined the various instruments such that this record speed from end user to end user can be used for the first time in German science," says Professor Dr. Bernhard Neumair, Managing Director of SCC. Interaction of user software and connecting stations was controlled and optimized for this purpose.

The connection is to foster the development of advanced network technologies and to support data-intensive high-end projects, such as the experiments at the LHC in Geneva, at the ITER fusion reactor in France, and in other international programs.

Read more on the  PhysOrg website.

​The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has released "Star Power," a new informational video that uses dramatic images and thought-provoking interviews to highlight the importance of the laboratory's research into magnetic fusion.

Through original music, graphics, live footage and photographs, the video explains fusion, its potential as an abundant renewable energy source and the lab's efforts to harness that energy for widespread use.

The video features 19 PPPL members, including Stewart Prager, director of the lab and a Princeton University professor of astrophysical sciences, and a host of additional scientists, engineers and technicians.

It also includes individuals outside the lab speaking about fusion, from US President Barack Obama to the actors on the television sitcom "The Big Bang Theory."

Read more and watch the video on PPPL website.

One of the greatest and most versatile scientists of the twentieth century, Hans Bethe (1906-2005), is portrayed in a new biography Nuclear Forces: The Making of the Physicist Hans Bethe by Silvan Schweber.

The sheer magnitude of Bethe's scientific accomplishments range across almost every field of theoretical physics; he was probably the last "universalist", a man who could solve virtually any physics problem that came his way.

It was at the end of the 1930s that he made his most lasting contribution — an explanation of the origin of the sun's energy generated through nuclear fusion. As Schweber tells us, Bethe was inspired to solve this problem during a conference, working out the essential details in short order. This was one of those puzzles that scientists had grappled with for more than a hundred years and Bethe solved it in a characteristically direct way. For this achievement he was awarded the Nobel Prize.

Read the full article at Scientific American.

Dr. Saša Novak, a researcher at the Jožef Stefan Institute (Ljubljana, Slovenia) and an active member of the Slovenian Fusion Association, has been presented with the Zois Award in recognition of her scientific achievements in the field of materials. The Zois Award, awarded annually, is the highest national prize awarded for lifetime achievements in science.

The award cited Dr Novak's scientific work on the colloidal processing of composite materials, in particular the achievement of her group in developing a ceramic composite for the first-wall blanket in future fusion reactors.

Dr. Novak has been involved in fusion research since the establishment of the Slovenian Fusion Association in 2005. Besides investigating and developing fusion-relevant materials, SiC/SiC and W-based composites, she is also active in the area of public information. She is a member of the Public Information Network (PIN) and a member of the Coordination Team of the Fusion Expo.

 --The Zois Award ceremony on 22 November 2013

​Deuterium oxide has properties that are quite different from light water, the normal water we deal with every day. In general, it will be more dense, have a higher freezing point and boiling point, higher viscosity, higher activity, and most importantly, a higher heat of vaporization and heat of fusion. Check out this chart on Wikipedia to compare the differences.

If the change happened suddenly, then there would be all sorts of problems...

Read more on Slate website.

​The surface of the sun has been surprisingly calm of late, with fewer sunspots than anytime in the last century, prompting curious scientists to wonder just what it might mean here on Earth.

Sunspots have been observed for millennia—first by Chinese astronomers and then, for the first time with a telescope, by Galileo in 1610.

The sunspots appear in roughly 11-year cycles—increasing to a daily flurry and then subsiding drastically, before amping up again.

But this cycle, dubbed cycle 24, has surprised scientists with its sluggishness.

The number of spots counted since it kicked off in December 2008 is well below the average observed over the last 250 years. In fact, it's less than half.

Read more on PhysOrg website.

​If you want to catch a firefly, any old glass jar will do. But when you're trying to bottle a star-the goal of fusion energy research-the bottle needs to be very special. A tokamak is one type of fusion bottle, capable of holding extremely hot plasma (10 times hotter than the sun) and keeping it stable while harvesting the prodigious amounts of energy produced in the fusion process. Of course, the trick is to keep the hot stuff in. And this is a complicated task.

Read more on Space Daily website.

​As the global energy economy makes the transition from fossil fuels toward cleaner alternatives, fusion becomes an attractive potential solution for satisfying the growing needs. Fusion energy, which is the power source for the sun, can be generated on earth, for example, in magnetically-confined laboratory plasma experiments (called "tokamaks") when the isotopes of hydrogen (e.g., deuterium and tritium) combine to produce an energetic helium "alpha" particle and a fast neutron — with an overall energy multiplication factor of 450:1.

Read more on HPC ( High Productivity Computing) web site.