A two-year effort by the ITER Organization and the seven Domestic Agencies came to fruition on 16 June, as the ITER Council officially announced its endorsement of the Resource-Loaded Integrated Schedule for the ITER Project, which identifies the date of First Plasma as December 2025. While the ITER Council acknowledges that the endorsed schedule to First Plasma is "challenging but technically achievable," it considers that by meeting all project milestones* to date, on or ahead of schedule, the ITER Organization and Domestic Agencies have already demonstrated their "collective capacity" to deliver on the updated schedule.   The updated Integrated Schedule represents "the best technically achievable path forward to First Plasma."   The Council highlighted the renewed confidence that results from evidence of increased effectiveness of decision-making, improved understanding of risks, and rigour in adhering to commitments.   First Plasma, however, is just the beginning of the road. The Council has asked the ITER Organization to lead the effort to extend the updated schedule through nuclear (deuterium-tritium) operation. Council expects a proposal "with sufficient detail" to enable the adoption of an updated project baseline at its next meeting in November.   "Although all of the Members have certain constraints due to their respective political and administrative processes at home," said Council Chair Won Namkung in his opening remarks, "I have no doubt about the commitment of all of us here today for the success of the project, and in providing utmost support to Domestic Agencies and the Director-General of the ITER Organization."   * During its Seventeenth Meeting in November 2015, the ITER Council approved a number of high-level project milestones for 2016-2017, against which the performance of the project could be monitored.   Click to read the Press Release in English or French. See the photo gallery below.  

It took 55 trucks to deliver the parts for the giant crawler crane and ten days to assemble them. In order to lift the four girders and their corresponding trolleys into position 43 metres above the Assembly Hall basemat, the crawler crane was positioned outside the building. Its boom, high above the building, held a man-sized hook that passed through an opening in the roof and reached down to the waiting components.Below, workers were busy adjusting cables, slings, braces and shackles in order to perfectly balance the first load to be lifted—one of the four girders, now fully equipped with 30 tonnes of gear motors, wheels, braces, and electrical equipment and weighing 186 tonnes. Despite the spectacular setting and the size of the components, the professionals appeared unfazed. "It's a standard operation," says Roberto Lanza of the ITER Building & Civil Works Section. "We'll first lift then slightly tilt each girder in order to align it with the rails above." The operation is a mix of brute force, high technology and worker know-how. Connected by radio to the lifting supervisor, the crane operator sitting in his cabin outside the building slowly lifts the load. Surveyors direct their laser beams to ensure that everything is proceeding nominally, and men on the ground and up in the rafters use ropes to adjust the component's position. As with all things ITER, tolerances are stringent. "The final adjustment must be ... and will be ... perfect," says Roberto. Two of the four girders are now in place as well as one of the four 100-tonne trolleys. Lift operations will continue and by the end of this week the Assembly Hall will be fitted out with one of the most spectacular tools required for the assembly of the machine.

Any component that reaches the ITER site is the tangible result of a sustained and coordinated effort—first involving the ITER Organization, the providing Domestic Agency and industrial contractors during the design and fabrication phase ... and then, once the component is ready for shipment, associating a local transporter, ITER's international logistics provider DAHER, Agence Iter France and finally Europe, the Member that covers the cost of transportation from the port of unloading to the ITER site.   Early in the morning of Thursday 16 June, ITER Council members left their chamber for a moment to gather around the large transformer destined for ITER's pulsed power electrical network (PPEN) that had arrived from China the day before. The 14-metre-long, 300-tonne component rising 5 metres above the ITER platform offered a perfect illustration of what the global ITER collaboration now achieves on a daily basis.   "So long as we continue to make concerted efforts together, as one team, I firmly believe that our common project will advance at the required pace," said Hejun Yin, the Chinese Vice-Minister of Science and Technology (MOST) who led his country's delegation to the Eighteenth Meeting of the ITER Council.   The gathering was of particular significance as the ITER Council had just decided, unanimously, to approve the updated schedule to First Plasma—a schedule for which, said ITER Director-General Bernard Bigot, "each one of us has to feel ownership and personal accountability."

At the Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research (DIFFER), the unique experiment Magnum-PSI has produced the first plasma following relocation—a major milestone that opens the way to full scientific operation by the end of the year. Magnum-PSI is the only laboratory setup in the world capable of investigating candidate materials under the realistic conditions for future fusion experiments like ITER.  Fusion research aims to turn the process which powers the Sun into a clean, safe and sustainable energy source on Earth.  Which materials and designs can handle the harsh conditions of a fusion power plant is still an open question. In ITER, the wall of the exhaust needs to withstand punishing heat loads of 10-20 MW/m2 while being bombarded with 10^24 charged particles/m2 every second, as well as short outbursts from the plasma up to 1000 MW/m2. Magnum-PSI is the only device in the world which can reach and exceed those plasma conditions to test candidate wall materials. The main facility in DIFFER's Plasma Surface Interactions laboratory is Magnum-PSI, a linear plasma generator equipped with a superconducting magnet to allow for continuous exposure. Photo: Bram Lamers / DIFFER The first plasma following relocation, achieved on 8 June, is a real accomplishment according to a press release issued by the institute this month requiring many different systems (the plasma source, vacuum pumps, cooling systems and data acquisition, control) to come on line. In the next months the Magnum-PSI team will install diagnostics to monitor plasma conditions and target materials. The experiment will also be connected to the new Ion Beam Facility for (sub)surface materials research that DIFFER is building up.At its new site, Magnum-PSI is undergoing a major upgrade, with a superconducting magnet system replacing conventional pulsed electromagnets. "This superconducting magnet will allow for truly long term exposure of materials to the plasma," says Hans van Eck, head of fusion facilities at DIFFER. This will enable the world's first experiments on how material properties evolve during the long timescales expected in ITER. In its 2.5 year run of experiments previous to DIFFER's relocation, Magnum-PSI has already produced exciting results for the fusion community and beyond. See the original press release or find out more about Magnum-PSI on the DIFFER website.

Three additional ITER cryostat segments have arrived in the port of Fos-sur-Mer after a one-month voyage from India. The 60° segments make up half of Tier 2 of the cryostat base (three other Tier 2 segments are due at a later date). The 120-tonne components have been unloaded in Fos in preparation for their delivery to the ITER site this week (weather permitting) along the ITER Itinerary. Each 96-wheel transport trailer will carry a protected load that is just over 14 metres long and six metres wide.

In a tokamak fusion reactor, the plasma causes intense heating of the divertor, similar to that encountered by a space shuttle when it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere. The belly of the shuttle must be protected by special heat tiles. In the same way, the divertor surface is made of small tungsten tiles that are tilted at a grazing angle with respect to the plasma stream. The edges of the tiles, like the nose and wings of the shuttle, are subject to very intense heat flux... Read more on the shaping of the plasma-facing components, and many other subjects, in issue #13 of the WEST Newsletter. At Cadarache (south of France), the Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research (CEA/DSM/IRFM) is modifying the Tore Supra plasma facility to become a test platform open to all ITER partners. WEST stands for W (tungsten) Environment in Steady-state Tokamak. 

"The proponents of fusion power have for years been promising us a plentiful and relatively safe form of new energy. Well here, at ITER in France, they are starting to make good on that promise."So begins the 30-minute documentary film on ITER and fusion that aired this past weekend on BBC Horizons.Presenter Adam Shaw visits ITER in the south of France as well as labs around the world (Germany, US and Canada) to learn more about the "tantalizing possibility" of fusion and its chance at transforming the world's relationship with energy. From outside the UK view the program here (inside the UK, watch here).