Subscribe options

Select your newsletters:

Please enter your email address:

@

Your email address will only be used for the purpose of sending you the ITER Organization publication(s) that you have requested. ITER Organization will not transfer your email address or other personal data to any other party or use it for commercial purposes.

If you change your mind, you can easily unsubscribe by clicking the unsubscribe option at the bottom of an email you've received from ITER Organization.

For more information, see our Privacy policy.

News & Media

Latest ITER Newsline

  • Image of the week | More cladding and a new message

    As the October sun sets on the ITER worksite, the cladding of the neutral beam power buildings takes on a golden hue. One after the other, each of the scientifi [...]

    Read more

  • Cryodistribution | Cold boxes 20 years in the making

    Twenty years—that is how long it took to design, manufacture and deliver the cold valve boxes that regulate the flow of cryogens to the tokamak's vacuum system. [...]

    Read more

  • Open Doors Day | Face to face with ITER immensity

    In October 2011, when ITER organized its first 'Open Doors Day,' there was little to show and much to leave to the public's imagination: the Poloidal Field [...]

    Read more

  • Fusion | Turning neutrons into electricity

    How will the power generated by nuclear fusion reactions be converted into electricity? That is not a question that ITER has been designed to answer explicitly, [...]

    Read more

  • Fusion world | JET completes a storied 40-year run

    In its final deuterium-tritium experimental campaign, Europe's JET tokamak device demonstrated plasma scenarios that are expected on ITER and future fusion powe [...]

    Read more

Of Interest

See archived entries

ITER NEWSLINE -

Award

A 30-year friendship with China

Some thirty years ago, HT-7, China's first superconducting tokamak, was entering operation and experiencing some issues with its ion cyclotron resonance (ICRH) antenna. As the fusion world was already one tight-knit family, the European Commission dispatched a young plasma physicist to Hefei, in Anhui province, where the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP) operated the machine.

Alain Bécoulet, in China in 2006, half-way into a 30-year relationship built on ''warm and confident relationships''. (Click to view larger version...)
Alain Bécoulet, in China in 2006, half-way into a 30-year relationship built on ''warm and confident relationships''.
For Alain Bécoulet, current head of ITER engineering (and former head of France's Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research, IRFM, which operates the WEST project), the mission¹ opened a new chapter in his life, marked by multifaceted collaborations, international agreements and, above all, long-lasting personal friendships.

In the Anhui province, friendships that are particularly meaningful are honoured by a special distinction, the "Huangshan Friendship Award." Last week, it was bestowed on Bécoulet in recognition of his 30-year relationship with ASIPP and the part he played in the development of scientific collaborations between the Chinese and European fusion communities.

For Bécoulet, who received another Chinese distinction earlier this year (the Scientific and Technological Cooperation Award of the People's Republic of China), the Friendship medal holds a special value. "It's not just about the formal collaborations we have established between Chinese institutions and the WEST tokamak, or the Sino-French agreement SIFFER, or the CEA-ASIPP partnership ... it is also, and maybe above all, the warm and confident relationships that we developed during these three decades."

In the early 1990s, when Bécoulet went to Hefei to lend a hand to his ASIPP colleagues, ITER was a four-partner project that China would not join before a full decade. But the seeds of understanding and collaboration were planted, and for the present ITER Engineering Domain Head this is a most precious asset.

 ¹Bécoulet was accompanied by Bertrand Beaumont, a radio frequency heating expert, now head of the ITER Ion Cyclotron section.

return to the latest published articles