Of Interest archive

​The Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research, ITER's neighbour in Saint Paul-lez-Durance, has published issue #8 of the WEST newsletter.

The issue features a report about the integration of WEST into the EUROfusion ITER Physics Programme, progress on the calibration of diagnostics in the machine, and the test deployment of a WEST inspection robot inside of the EAST tokamak.

WEST stands for (W Environment in Steady-state Tokamak), where "W" is the chemical symbol of tungsten. The Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research is modifying the Tore Supra plasma facility to become a test platform open to all ITER partners.

Read the eighth issue of the WEST Newsletter here.

The JET machine area is a hive of activity as the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) prepares the facility on behalf of EUROfusion for its next run of experiments later in 2015.

The shutdown period is an opportunity for engineers to tune up key systems on JET and to install new components to improve the tokamak's performance. This time round, the focus is on plasma fuelling and heating systems. The high frequency pellet injector, which propels frozen deuterium fuel into the JET plasma, is being optimized and repositioned to achieve more reliable operation. A refurbished antenna—the ion cyclotron resonance heating system, which produces radiowaves that resonate with the plasma particles and heat them up—will also be plugged in. JET's antenna is similar to the one that the next-step ITER Tokamak will use. Bringing it back online will mean that experiments can simulate ITER conditions more accurately, and has the added advantage of helping to flush out impurities from the core of the plasma.

European fusion researchers are keen to see how the 2014 JET tests have left their mark on the machine. The shutdown is enabling CCFE's team of remote handling engineers to remove sample tiles from the interior of JET so their condition can be analyzed. Inspecting the tiles will yield valuable information about how the beryllium and tungsten wall lining is being affected by its close proximity to the plasma (another hot topic for ITER). And a remote-controlled vacuum cleaner has been inside JET collecting dust which can also give pointers on the interaction between the plasma and the wall materials.

In a similar vein, a new high-resolution camera has just been taken into the JET chamber to photograph the tiles in the divertor region. In this area, as the name suggests, impurities and waste material are diverted out of the plasma, and the tungsten surfaces of the divertor are exposed to intense heat as a result. The photographic survey is giving scientists the most detailed pictures yet of the condition of this area of the machine.

Read the full article on the CCFE website here.

The ITER Business Forum 2015 (IBF/15) will take place in Marseille, France from 25 to 27 March 2015.

Already, 256 participants from 135 companies have registered to participate.

IBF/15 is a unique occasion for companies to approach the ITER Project and to investigate possibilities for involvement or partnership around upcoming tender offers.

Key project actors will present the status of systems. Twelve thematic workshops with presentations will be given by the ITER Organization, the procurement agencies for ITER—the Domestic Agencies—and key suppliers.

Visit the IBF/15 website for registration information.

The JET and Medium-Size Tokamaks General Planning Meeting was held in January in Lausanne at the Olympic Museum. The conference was a major step towards the internationalization of the TCV tokamak at EPFL (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne).   The EUROfusion Consortium is the umbrella organization of all fusion research laboratories in Europe including Switzerland. Tasked with building the roadmap to ITER and DEMO, the prototype of a fusion commercial reactor, it provides the work platform for exploiting the Joint European Torus (JET) in the UK, sometimes referred to as "little ITER." EPFL's TCV tokamak carries out important experimental work in fusion, focusing on different plasma confinements and shapes.    The Planning Meeting, organized by the Center for Research in Plasma Physics (CRPP), which runs the TCV, focused on proposals for experiments aligned with the EUROfusion roadmap and that could be performed in 2015 on the roadmap's dedicated devices: JET, ASDEX Upgrade and EPFL's TCV. Scientists presented their views of a comprehensive experimental strategy, which was discussed by the almost 150 senior scientists attending the conference.   The selected experiments will be performed on EUROfusion's different devices by international groups of physicists. The plan calls for the TCV to be used for almost two months in 2015 and early 2016, while it will also continue to operate for EPFL's own research goals, which are generally also aligned with the ITER roadmap.   The conference included a visit of the TCV, followed by a reception at the CRPP's site.   Read the full article on the EPFL website. See also the report from EUROfusion.   --Photo: EPFL, Alain Herzog

​Greg Clark MP, UK Minister of State for Universities, Science & Cities, visited JET on Friday 23 January to find out how researchers and engineers are bringing fusion power closer to reality.

Mr Clark met staff from EUROfusion—the European consortium that coordinates the research on JET—and CCFE, which operates the experiment on their behalf. He heard about how JET, as the world's largest magnetic fusion device, has a unique role in preparing for the ITER international research project, which when constructed will aim to prove that fusion can be a viable commercial-scale energy source. During his tour he met CCFE engineer Chris Fowler (pictured) in the JET Remote Handling Unit. Chris gave the Minister a demonstration of the advanced remote handling technology that allows operators to maintain and upgrade JET without the need to send people into the device. Remote handling and robotics was the main theme of the day, as Mr Clark officially started construction of Culham's new RACE centre with a groundbreaking ceremony.   Read the full article on the CCFE website.

Like a new passenger jet or power plant, the National Spherical Torus Upgrade (NSTX-U) must be certified safe to operate. At the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, the task of evaluating the safety of the $94 million upgrade belongs to the Activity Certification Committee (ACC), whose work remains ongoing. "This is a critical group," said Adam Cohen, deputy director for operations at the Laboratory. "When you have a complex activity like the upgrade you need a standing committee to guarantee that it will run safely."   For nearly two years the ACC has reviewed key components of the upgrade, which is scheduled for completion in March and will make the NSTX-U the most powerful spherical fusion facility on Earth. The group conducts hands-on inspections — or "walkdowns" — of all systems and subsystems and reviews training and pre-operational test procedures. "It's very vital and reassuring when the ACC says we're ready to go," said Mike Williams, director of engineering and infrastructure and associate director of the Laboratory.   Read the whole story on PPPL website.

​Take one stainless steel tokamak component, bake in the oven for seven hours at 980 degrees C till it's just right...et voilà — it's ready to go into the fusion device.

Not quite that simple, but this is the procedure to eliminate unwanted magnetism from materials that will be installed in the vessel of MAST-Upgrade, the new UK fusion experiment that is being built at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE, UK).

Stainless steel is used because it is strong, cheap and can be non-magnetic. For MAST-Upgrade, the latter property is particularly important. In a tokamak, hot plasma fuel is confined using strong magnetic coils. So machine components with low magnetism are necessary to avoid perturbing the magnetic configurations and to achieve accurate measurement of the tokamak's magnetic field. However, stainless steel as supplied can be slightly magnetic. If left untreated this would cause stray magnetic fields when MAST-Upgrade is operated and also make magnetic measurements less accurate.

Baking the steel reorders its crystal structure to reduce the extent to which it becomes magnetised without significantly affecting its other properties. Over the past nine months, various parts have been heat-treated in ovens at the Special Techniques Group workshop at the Culham site.

"It's an effective method and although it might seem low-tech, there's a hi-tech reason behind it," explains CCFE Work Package Manager James Foster. "There isn't one 'recipe' that fits everything, so each component has a different formula — just like in baking at home."

Read the original article on the CCFE website.

​

The ITER Business Forum 2015 (IBF/15) will take place in Marseille, France, from 25 to 27 March 2015 with the participation and support of the ITER Organization and the ITER Domestic Agencies (in particular the European Domestic Agency, Fusion for Energy), the Industrial Liaison Officers (ILO) network, Agence ITER France, and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Marseille-Provence. Just like the events held in 2007, 2011 and 2013, the fourth ITER Business Forum will provide industry with updated information on the ITER Project and on procurement procedures and forthcoming calls for tenders (2015-2016). It also aims to facilitate industrial partnerships—around the ITER project and beyond—inside of Europe and internationally (for example: consortia to answer calls for tender, industrial partnerships, subcontracting, local support). IBF/15 will include: -          an industrial conference with presentations given by the ITER Organization, Domestic Agencies and their main suppliers; -          one-to-one meetings on 26 and 27 March 2015; -          an optional program of technical tours on 25 March, including a visit of the ITER worksite; -          a welcome reception on 25 March in the evening and a gala dinner on 26 March at the venue. Registration for participation in IBF/15 is now open here.

​Since the early days of project implementation in Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France, ITER's closest neighbour and host—the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, CEA (Cadarache site)—has provided a number of services to the ITER Organization.

These services are provided within the framework of the Site Support Agreement, which was signed in 2009 by the two entities as foreseen in the ITER Agreement and its Annex on Site Support. Regular meetings of the Site Liaison Committee, bringing together representatives from both organizations, are the occasion to discuss pending issues, exchange information and review actions underway.  On 10 December 2014, during the 10th Site Liaison Committee meeting, the ITER Organization and the CEA signed two agreements.   1. Agreement on organizational modalities in the event of emergency situations Agreement which defines the information, support and response modalities between the CEA/Cadarache and the ITER Organization in the event of any emergency liable to trigger, or not, emergency action plans. 2. Agreement related to the management of environmental aspects on the ITER site Agreement which defines the relations between the ITER Organization and Agence Iter France (the CEA agency created to manage the French contribution to the project) related to the environmental commitments undertaken by Agence Iter France, such as the definition of an environmental management plan for the 1,200 hectares on and around the ITER site. This agreement entered into force on 10 December 2014 and is concluded for the duration of implementation of the environmental management plan (31 December 2032). An aerial view of the CEA-Cadarache site.

​The Korean Domestic Agency signed an important contract with Korean supplier Wonil Corp. for the ITER vacuum vessel gravity supports on 11 December 2014. Nine sets of gravity supports will be assembled under the lower ports to allow for the vacuum vessel's thermal expansion and to sustain loads in the radial, toroidal and vertical directions.

The supplier Wonil Corp. is a leading company in the heavy machining industry and has good experience with the ITER quality system through its participation in the procurement of the ITER blanket shield blocks and the assembly tooling. During the signing ceremony, the company strongly expressed its enthusiasm to carry out the mission and meet the demands of the vacuum vessel schedule and quality requirements for ITER.   - Ji-Min Song, ITER Korea

Visitors coming to the ITER site will from now on have one more attraction to discover: The mock-up of an ITER absolute valve seal and test rig, used to demonstrate the feasibility of the largest high pressure, all-metal valve, ever to be manufactured.

ITER will rely on two very powerful neutral beam injectors to heat the plasma to fusion temperatures. A third injector will also be installed—the diagnostic neutral beam injector—which is used as a diagnostic for the plasma.

Each injector contains a vacuum vessel which needs to be vented to atmospheric pressure independently from the torus vacuum vessel in case of an incident. An absolute valve has thus been developed by the Swiss company VAT to "absolutely" isolate the vacuum in the torus from the neutral beam vacuum systems.

The valve uses seals made of stainless steel with silver coating to ensure high vacuum tightness up to a pressure differential of 0.1 MPa across the plate while maintaining a leak rate of less than 1·10-8 Pa·m3/s 1, but can withstand up to 0.2 MPa without incurring damage. With a nominal bore dimension of 1600 mm this absolute valve will be the largest ever manufactured, approximately five times bigger than existing products.

The December 2014 issue of Fusion in Europe focuses on work underway—including novel types of simulations and materials research—to support the early design of DEMO, the machine that will come after ITER. The issue also covers the reorganization of fusion research in Europe under the banner of EUROfusion and brings news from some of the experiments planned in European fusion facilities in support of ITER.

 

You can read the latest Fusion in Europe here.

Assystem, a leading international group in the fields of engineering and innovation consultancy, is part of the ENGAGE consortium (Assystem, France; Atkins, UK; Empresados Agrupados, Spain; and Iosis, France) that was chosen in 2010 as architect/engineer for ITER site construction by the European Domestic Agency, Fusion for Energy (F4E).   The company is also contributing to the project by providing expertise in such domains as design, construction, machine assembly, and the manufacturing of high technology remote handling systems for the ITER divertor.   In December, Assystem released a series of three corporate videos highlighting its contributions to ITER. About 100 people attended a showing organized near the ITER site, including Assystem executives Stéphane Aubarbier (Executive Vice-President), Christian Jeanneau (Engineering and Operation Services Director General) and Bernard Blanc (Nuclear Business Development Manager); the mayor of Vinon-sur-Verdon, Claude Cheilan; Site, Buildings and Power Supplies Project Manager for the European Domestic Agency, Laurent Schmieder; and Michel Claessens, Head of Communication at the ITER Organization.   The three videos can be viewed here.

​The next two years in MIT's Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) may see fusion research embark on a landmark period of innovation. In his address to the NSE community in the inaugural Del Favero Doctoral Thesis Prize Lecture, Zach Hartwig PhD '14 not only described his group's research achievements but also explained why, in his view, fusion research should now be at the top of the department's agenda. Hartwig argued that U.S. fusion research, which has been focused on physics for the past two decades, now needs to incorporate more attention to engineering, utility integration, and economics as it transitions to building devices that will produce energy — and that this can be achieved by leveraging the tremendous engineering and systems expertise of NSE.

Read the whole article on the MIT News website.

On 5 December 2014, Osamu Motojima, Director-General of the ITER Organization, opened a day-long international workshop on remuneration. Organized by ITER's Human Resources Division, the workshop gathered over 40 participants from international organizations.

The ITER Organization has been part of a coordinated system network of international organizations since 2008 and was pleased to act as host on this important occasion. The network organizes regular workshops for human resource professionals and legal specialists in the fields of remuneration and pension, enabling international organizations to share their experience and forge valuable contacts. 

Inside of ITER's large D-shaped toroidal field coils, the stacked layers of conductor will be held in place by radial plates—large steel structures with grooves machined on either side.   In 2012, the European Domestic Agency awarded a EUR 160 million contract for the fabrication of 70 radial plates to a French-Italian consortium, CNIM (France)-SIMIC (Italy) and manufacturing is currently underway.   In this promotional video produced by CNIM, the camera takes us inside the 3,000 m2 factory in Toulon, France that was specially constructed for CNIM's share of the radial plate contract. One radial plate comes off of the manufacturing line per month, thanks to a team of 50 skilled employees organized in three shifts.   Three years of investment in R&D and industrial processes and the construction of a 9 x 36 metre machining centre were necessary to perfect the highly technological machining and welding of the ITER radial plates.   View the CNIM video here.

​In November, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced a new director for its Plasma Science and Fusion Center, home to the Alcator C-Mod tokamak.

As of 1 January 2015, Dennis Whyte, professor of nuclear science and engineering, will replace Miklos Porkolab, who returns to teaching and research after nearly 20 years as head of the research centre.

In the announcement, Maria Zuber, MIT's vice president for research, thanked Porkolab "for almost 20 years of distinguished leadership and contributions to MIT and the fusion energy community worldwide."

Whyte is a recognized leader in the field of nuclear fusion, with his research addressing the boundary plasma-material interfaces in magnetic fusion.

He received his PhD from the University of Québec's National Institute of Scientific Research in 1993 and joined the MIT faculty in 2006. His recent research has focused on the novel application of high-energy ion beams for real-time material interrogation in fusion environments, and the use of new high magnetic field superconductor materials for compact, robust fusion pilot plants for electricity production. He was recently recognized with the International Atomic Energy Agency's 2013 Nuclear Fusion Journal Prize, which was presented at the 25th biennial IAEA Fusion Energy Conference last month, for research carried out on Alcator C-Mod.

Read the full story on the MIT website.

​The Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST) facility at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) is undergoing a major £30 million upgrade that will enhance the UK's role in international fusion research.

When completed in 2015, MAST-Upgrade will enable scientists to:

Make the case for a fusion Component Test Facility (CTF). A CTF would test reactor systems for the DEMO prototype fusion power plant, and a spherical tokamak is seen as an ideal design for the facility;

Add to the knowledge base for ITER and help resolve key plasma physics issues to ensure its success;

Test reactor systems. MAST-Upgrade will be the first tokamak to trial the innovative Super-X divertor — a high-power exhaust system that reduces power loads from particles leaving the plasma. If successful, Super-X could be used in DEMO and other future fusion devices.

In December, the second of four poloidal field coils was installed as planned. All four coils should be in place early in the New Year.

Read the story on the CCFE website. 

​The Governing Board of the European Domestic Agency for ITER Fusion for Energy (F4E) has decided to appoint Dr Pietro Barabaschi as Acting Director of F4E with effect from 1 March 2015 until a new Director takes up duties. The Governing Board has also agreed to initiate the process to recruit a new Director.

Dr Barabaschi will replace the outgoing Director, Professor Henrik Bindslev, who will leave F4E on 28 February 2015. Professor Bindslev has been appointed Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Southern Denmark.

The Chair of the Governing Board, Mr Stuart Ward, expressed, on behalf of its members, his gratitude to Professor Henrik Bindslev for the vision and leadership that he has demonstrated as the Director of F4E, which manages Europe's contribution to ITER and the Broader Approach projects with Japan.

Dr Barabaschi has been head of F4E's Broader Fusion Development Department at Garching, Germany, since 2008. An electrical engineer, he started his career in the JET project. In 1992 he joined the ITER Joint Central Team in San Diego and by 2006 he was the deputy to the Project Leader as well as head of the Design Integration Division of the ITER International Team at Garching.

See the original story on the F4E website.

With a lecture on the subject of "The Fusion Roadmap and the challenges of the ITER era," Francesco Romanelli completed his tenure as EFDA Leader and EFDA Associate Leader for JET on 28 November.   As EFDA and JET Leader and interim Programme Manager during the first months of EUROfusion, Francesco Romanelli was the driving force behind the European Fusion Roadmap and had played a key role in re-definition of the fusion research programme in the European Commission research and innovation program Horizon 2020.   In his talk, he briefly reviewed the history of fusion research since the 1960s. Looking back on his time at JET, he made the audience smile when he pointed out that "the average life-time of a JET director was either seven months or seven years. I can claim to have stayed the longest—seven years AND seven months."   He finished by thanking the many individuals and groups who made the roadmap and the successes in JET happen. Steve Cowley, Director of CCFE, reminded the audience of Francesco Romanelli's scientific career in theoretical fusion science and his papers which are still highly important. "I have an enormous respect for Francesco, he said". "Fusion owes him a great deal."   EUROfusion Programme Manager Tony Donné, paid respect to the tremendous amount of work which had been done under Francesco's leadership.   Read the full article on the EUROfusion website.   -- Francesco Romanelli poses with family members at the farewell event.