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Conferences


The Senior Management spent the week end at an off-site meeting in the beautiful village of Arvieux in les Hautes Alpes. There were discussions on subjects ranging from preparations of the next ITER Council Meeting to staff appraisals, future promotion and the advancement procedures and the upcoming Enquete Publique. Surrounded by snowy peaks and far from interruptions, the clear, fresh, air generated clear, fresh, thinking! The group was very warmly welcomed by the Conseil General des Hautes-Alpes. The ITER Organization would like to express its thanks for the wonderful hospitality.

The Knights Templar castle in Greoux-les-Bains.
Next week-end, 20 and 21 September, government palaces, privately owned castles, locked chapels and churches will open their door to the public. European Heritage Day, which France initiated 25 years ago as "Journees du Patrimoine", is a unique opportunity to visit such historical landmarks as the Prefecture palace in Marseilles, the Knights Templar fortress in Greoux-les-Bains or the 16th century castle of Allemagne-en-Provence, 16 miles east of Cadarache.

Attendance at the Journees du Patrimoine has been steadily growing since 1984 and reached an all time high last year with 12 million participants.

While private places will welcome visitors all week-end, public monuments and museums will make a special effort to entertain them: guided tours and conferences, special activities and temporary exhibits are scheduled in almost every French town and village.

Marseilles' 17th century City HallIn Marseilles, mayor Gaudin will play tour guide to the public in person, welcoming them into his private office and showing them around the city's 17th century Hotel de Ville. So will the Prefet de Region, wearing his grand uniform, in his monumental 19th century palace.

There are about 43.000 "Protected Historical Monuments" in France, half of them privately owned. In terms of architectural heritage, whether Roman, Medieval or Classical, Provence, with close to 2,200 monuments, comes second only to the Paris region. Considering the offer, choosing a destination may prove difficult. These official web pages will help you make your selection:

Aix-en-Provence

Manosque

Bouches du Rhône

Alpes-de-Haute-Provence

Vaucluse

Var

Fusion researchers from around the world gather in Germany this week to chart the way forward to commercial fusion reactors. The 25th Symposium on Fusion Technology (SOFT) is expected to attract nearly 700 delegates who will present and discuss more than 500 papers and posters on a wide range of topics in fusion technology.

GS Lee
GS LeeCongratulations to ITER Korea's Director General Gyung-Su Lee on his recent appointment as President of the National Fusion Research Institute of Korea.

GS Lee studied physics at the Seoul National University, Korea before majoring in plasma physics and fusion at the University of Texas at Austin in the USA. He went on to work as a member of the research staff. at Oak Ridge and then at MIT, before returning to Korea to take up the post of Division Director of the Joint Research Division of the Korea Basic Science Institute. From 1996- 2005 he was the Principal Investigator of the prestigious KSTAR project and became the Director General of ITER Korea in 2007. He is also the current Chairman of the International fusion Research Council of the IAEA.

ITER administration staff during the SAP training
On September 10th, ITER achieved another important milestone in helping our administrative processes becoming even more efficient.

DIAMS, the SAP based Dynamic ITER Administration Management System tool for processing and integrating data from different sources into a unified system, is now running live in the Human Resouces Department!

From now on, payroll calculations, personnel data and job position data will be managed through SAP. Later this month, the Finance, Budget, Procurement, Contract and travel departments will also go live. In order to be able to do so, at least one staff member of every department is currently being trained in how to process missions, purchase requests, small value orders, goods receipts and invoices for the department in SAP.

By the end of the year the SAP Portal will go on-line for all ITER staff giving access to every employee concerning certain personal data or management of absences for example.

The implementation of DIAMS has a number of advantages for our organization: the system ensures that data from different sources can be integrated, that they are secure, consistent, traceable and auditable.

It will also ensure budget control, and interfaces with schedule and cost tools developed by the Project Office. It means also that the budget status can be given at any time and that validation and payment processes will be faster.

It is going to take some time for all of us to become familiar with the system, but over time, it will greatly enhance the overall management efficiency of ITER and ensure that we are ready to cope with the future growth of our organization at that level.

In order to make sure that "Black Wednesday" does not happen again, the teams responsible for power supply, IT and logistics last week took a close look at the server-room in the new ITER office building JWS2. The focus was on the Uninterrupted Power Supplies (UPS), special batteries that can feed the power demand for about 30 minutes, and the safe storage of the new ITER servers. Two weeks ago, a lighting strike led to a severe power cut in the CEA infrastructure, leading to the ITER Servers crashing and not coming back for 24 long hours.

David Sands
David Sands, head of the Quality Assurance Division, is a man on a mission: he wants to make ITER staff understand that as ITER is the first ever fusion plant to be licensed, the French nuclear regulator and the public need to be convinced that the ITER facility is being built and managed correctly and we work to properly approved systems and procedures. But he is also a great believer in common sense and not in bureaucracy. "Simple is best" — a policy he wants to put into practice at ITER. "Don't write a thesis when a few sentences will do, because if documents and procedures are too long and complex, users won't work to them."

David took up his post at ITER in March this year after working in industry, including nuclear, petro-chemical and off-shore, and nineteen years in European fusion, at JET. His role is to develop and maintain the ITER Quality Program and audit its implementation both at the ITER Organization and at Domestic Agencies. He is working with the Management Quality Program working group to develop a process based system that will navigated using a user friendly web page. Not only will this make documents and procedures easy to find, it will go some way towards satisfying IAEA requirements. His Division is part of the Safety and Security Department that provides independent reviews and reports to the ITER Director-General. He and his staff will develop both internal and external surveillance audit programmes as required by the regulator and to this end lead assessors and auditors will have to be trained. David will be looking for volunteers from all areas of the project to be trained as auditors so feel free to let him know if you are interested.

David is currently busy visiting all the Domestic Agencies to ensure they understand the quality procurement requirements for themselves and their contractors - it is important to get this understanding before the manufacturing process begins. It is also important that we are seen to exercise some common sense and flexibility - without this, cooperation with Domestic Agencies and their contractors will be difficult and will certainly not help the project. Soon he will be turning his attention back to developing the ITER QA management system — one that will reflect his practical approach — "just produce what's necessary!"

The British physicist Nichol Peacock, who played a leading part in nuclear fusion research, particularly in the development of techniques to measure and compare the parameters of fusion plasmas, died on 19 July this year.

Materials experts at UKAEA Culham have identified for the first time the processes that cause the weakening of steel in tall buildings, such as in the World Trade Center fire of September 11th 2001. The new findings are published in two papers by researchers from UKAEA's nuclear fusion laboratory at Culham near Oxford, UK. Materials experts at UKAEA Culham are identifying the principles for designing special steels for use in future fusion power stations. Their work shows that the same microscopic magnetic processes which affect the strength of materials in fusion reactors are responsible for the collapse of tall buildings if the steel structures are exposed to high temperatures.

On 21 October, Brazil and EURATOM will sign in Brussels a cooperation agreement in the area of nuclear fusion. The agreement will make it possible to exchange Brazilian and European scientists between the research centres on both sides.

It took some time, but the result is well worth it... the new ITER logo and graphic standards are now ready for use. This new graphic style will convey to the world the identity of ITER and help us communicate in a consistent manner to both external and internal audiences.

Here is the IDM link to the new templates for letterheads, PowerPoint presentations, scientific posters, fax sheet and logo types that are currently available:

https://user.iter.org/?uid=2DJT9B

All Department secretaries have also received the new business cards template. You will also find the ITER Identification & Graphic Standards Manual which details how to use the logo, which spacing, type face, font and colour to use and how to use it on any print documents. Hard copies of this Manual can be obtained via your Department secretaries.

Please make sure to use these templates and the new ITER look in all future ITER communication to ensure a consistent image of ITER at all levels.

For any questions or help on how to use our new ITER brand, please contact Iris Rona, Internal Communications, ext. 9803, email; iris.rona@iter.org