From the outside, it's just another big, shiny stainless-steel pipe bent at a 90° angle. But take off the shipping caps at one end or the other, have a peek inside, and you will see a technological marvel. A cryostat feedthrough is part of the feeder system that accommodates and relays all the essential "services" for the operation of a superconducting magnet.   Connected to a coil terminal box at one end and crossing into the cryostat at the other, it carries the superconducting busbars for the electrical current, the piping for the cryogenic fluids, and the cables for the diagnostics signals—all carefully insulated by an actively-cooled thermal shield and a vacuum duct.   Last week, the first of the 31 cryostat feedthroughs that must be delivered to the ITER construction site stood in the hall of the Magnet Infrastructure Facilities for ITER (MIFI), a workshop operated by a joint team from ITER and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) to develop and qualify the ITER magnet elements and their assembly procedures.   Designed by the ITER feeder team, procured by the Chinese Domestic Agency, and manufactured at the Institute of Plasma Physics ASIPP in Hefei under the feeder team's supervision, the cryostat feedthrough is the first magnet component required on site because it needs to be brought into position before the completion of the cryostat base support ring.   Feeders are the lifeline of the ITER magnet system, relaying electrical power, cryogens, and instrumentation from outside of the cryostat into the powerful coils. (Photo ASIPP) At MIFI, the cryostat feedthrough will be subjected to high-voltage tests, leak tests and endoscopic inspections before being installed into the Tokamak assembly arena and later connected to poloidal field coil #4, one of the two largest of the machine's six poloidal field coils (24 metres in diameter).   To celebrate this highly symbolic event, representatives from CEA's Research Institute for Magnetic Fusion (IRFM), MIFI and the Chinese Domestic Agency joined ITER management and staff from the Magnets Division inside the MIFI hall, in the presence of the massive component.   "The arrival of this component is in itself a cause for celebration," said ITER Director-General Bernard Bigot. "It is the very first in a long line of magnet system elements for the most complex, most challenging electromagnetic device ever designed—the ITER Tokamak."   For Luo Dulong, head of ITER China, the moment—ten years, almost to the day, after the official establishment of the ITER Organization—will be "recognized as historical." "MIFI is the most visible element of our cooperation with ITER in the field of superconducting magnets, and this component is the most spectacular among those that will be tested in this workshop," said Alain Bécoulet, the head of IRFM. "But it is only a beginning. As more magnet components are delivered to ITER in the coming weeks and months our collaboration with increase and expand."    The cryostat feedthrough is a "captive" component that needs to be brought into position before the completion of the cryostat base support ring. "We began working on feeders with ASIPP 12 years ago," reflected Neil Mitchell, head of the ITER Magnet Division. "It is hugely motivating for the different teams to see the arguments, discussions, tests and prototypes finally condense into the real component that is standing here today."   The long adventure is drawing to its successful conclusion—an indication that, in Luo Dulong's words, "ITER is in very good shape."   And so is fusion research as a whole: a few steps from MIFI, in a crowded and intensely silent control room, operators were monitoring plasmas shots in the Tore Supra tokamak, now refurbished into WEST and operating as a test platform for ITER.   Watch a short video of the arrival here.

Both the mission and physics of ITER can be reduced to a single letter: Q. To understand the Q of ITER is to understand its most essential operating parameter as well as the raison d'être of the ITER Project. What then is the meaning of Q?   Quantitatively, Q is the out-versus-in power amplification ratio of the fusion reaction: the ratio of the amount of thermal power produced by hydrogen fusion compared to the amount of thermal power injected to superheat the plasma and initiate the reaction. ITER is designed to produce plasmas having Q ≥ 10: meaning that injecting 50 megawatts of heating power into the plasma will produce a fusion output of at least 500 megawatts.   Qualitatively, the Q of ITER signifies the achievement of a "burning plasma"—a state of matter that has never been produced on Earth and that will usher in a new era of fusion research. In a burning plasma, the energy of the helium nuclei produced when hydrogen isotopes fuse (see box below) becomes large enough—because of the large number of reactions—to exceed the plasma heating that is injected from external sources. This is an essential condition for one day generating electricity from fusion power, and enabling scientists from 35 countries to study burning plasmas is the primary scientific motivation of the ITER Project.   Essentially, all other major aspects of tokamak plasma physics have been demonstrated and studied in smaller machines. In engineering terms, the construction of a tokamak capable of creating and sustaining a burning plasma for periods ranging from hundreds to thousands of seconds requires the development of "reactor-like" tokamak systems across virtually the entire range of fusion technologies. The study of burning plasmas in ITER is intended to demonstrate the feasibility of building commercial fusion power plants for electricity generation.   Plasma energy breakeven, or Q=1, has never been achieved in a fusion device: the current record is held by the European tokamak JET (UK), which succeeded in generating a Q of 0.67. ITER's Q value of ≥10 makes it a first-of-kind machine.   How did ITER's designers choose the specific Q value? Accounting for the size of ITER's vacuum vessel (830 cubic metres) and the strength of the confining magnetic field (5.3 Tesla), the ITER plasma can carry a current of up to 15 megaamperes. Under these conditions, an input thermal power of 50 megawatts is needed to bring the hydrogen plasma in the vessel to about 150 million degrees Celsius. This temperature in turn translates to a high enough velocity, among a sufficient population of hydrogen nuclei, to induce fusion at a rate that will produce at least 500 megawatts of thermal power output.     The fusion between the nuclei of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium (D) and tritium (T) produces one helium nucleus, also called an "alpha particle," and one neutron. The helium nucleus, which carries 20% of the energy produced by the fusion reaction, is electrically charged. It remains confined by the magnetic fields of the tokamak and contributes to the continued heating of the plasma. When heating by the helium nuclei is dominant ("alpha heating") the plasma is said to be a "burning plasma." The neutron, which carries 80% of the energy produced by the fusion reaction, has no electrical charge and is therefore unaffected by magnetic fields. It escapes from the plasma. It is the impact of the neutrons on the inner walls of the machine that generates heat, which in ITER will be evacuated, but which in future fusion plants will produce pressurized steam and start the process, by way of a turbine and an alternator, of electricity production. During ITER's full deuterium-tritium fusion power operation, three heating systems will be employed: electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH), capable of injecting up to 20 megawatts; ion cyclotron radiofrequency heating (ICRF), with a similar 20 megawatt maximum heating capability; and the neutral beam (NB) heating system, capable of injecting a maximum of 33 megawatts into the plasma. Thus, 73 megawatts of plasma heating will be available to ITER operators, well above the 50 megawatts required.   Why stop at a Q of 10? Why not design ITER for a Q of 30, or 50? The answer is clear: expense. For tokamaks, size and magnetic field strength matter. In simple terms, increasing Q would require an increase in the major radius or in the magnetic field strength. Either approach would have increased the cost of the device unnecessarily, whereas the achievement of Q ≥ 10 is sufficient to allow the primary scientific and technology goals of the project to be satisfied.   And a related question: Why not design ITER to produce electricity? This would also have required an increase in cost with no great benefit to the goals of the project. ITER is an experimental device designed to operate with a wide range of plasma conditions in order to develop a deeper understanding of the physics of burning plasmas, and to allow the exploration of optimum parameters for plasma operation in a power plant. The addition of the systems required to convert fusion power to high temperature steam to drive an electricity generator would not have been cost-effective, since the pattern of experimental operation of a tokamak such as ITER will allow for very limited generation of electricity.   Commercial fusion plants will be designed based on a power balance that accounts for the entire facility: the electricity output, sent to the industrial grid, compared to the electricity consumed by the facility itself—not only in tokamak heating, but also in secondary systems such as the electricity used to power the electromagnets, cool the cryogenics plant, and run diagnostics and control systems.   Not so with ITER. The ITER cryogenics plant and magnet conversion facilities are designed to operate efficiently, cooling the superconductor magnets to -269 °C and powering them to generate the necessary 15 megaamperes of plasma current. But the electricity consumed in these systems has no bearing on the thermal power balance of the plasma itself, and it is the burning (or largely self-heating) plasma that is of interest to ITER's scientists. With the physics of magnetically confined burning plasmas accessible for the first time in history, ITER's legacy will burn brightly in the fusion electricity plants of the years to come.   For ITER, it's all about the Q.

In the fall of 2007, clearing and early levelling works—a contribution from the host state, France—were underway on the ITER platform, a design review for the machine had just been completed, and an international team of 170 people was already at work in a prefabricated building next door at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). The ITER Project had a Director-General Nominee, Kaname Ikeda of Japan, and a Principal Deputy Director-General Nominee, Norbert Holtkamp of Europe. But it still lacked the legal entity under which work could be pursued to build and operate the ITER installation.   Eleven months earlier, on 26 November 2006, the ITER Agreement had laid the ground for the establishment of such an entity. But before entering into force, the Agreement needed to be ratified, or approved, by all seven Members, each according to its own domestic procedures.   The establishment of the ITER Organization was celebrated but—from a practical point of view—daily life and work did not change much for the original group of ITER employees. The process took time. It was eventually completed in the autumn of 2007 and on 24 October, the ITER Project and those who worked for it moved under the umbrella of the newly created ITER International Fusion Energy Organization (ITER Organization).   The event was celebrated by the original group of ITER employees but, from a practical point of view, daily life and work did not change much. Before the official process was completed, the first employees had been seconded to the project by their employer (for example the European Commission, or a government or scientific entity in one of the Members).   The representatives of the ITER Members participated in the celebration through video link. Clockwise: India, Korea, Russia, the ITER Organization in Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, Japan, the USA, Europe and China. Now, they would soon be signing a new contract with the ITER Organization, forming the first strata of what is today an international community of more than 800 people.   "By creating the ITER Organization our Member Parties have established a completely new model for international collaboration," said Director-General nominee Kaname Ikeda during the ceremony that was held to celebrate the event. "It is our challenge to show that outstanding talent coming from many different nationalities can also fuse to create a dynamic workforce."

In an age of information overload, effective communication—reaching new audiences with persuasive, inspiring messages—is an ever-increasing challenge. Communicating on complex science topics has in some ways become easier, given greater access to multimedia tools. But attention spans are becoming shorter, and messages more compressed. Gaining and holding an audience's interest with a 10-year-long narrative, like ITER's, is no easy task. At the World Conference of Science Journalists (WCSJ) in San Francisco, where the ITER Project made its debut this past weekend, creative science communication was on full display.   At a Thursday evening concert, collected and projected scientific data representing 500 years of climate change—from the year 1800 to the year 2300—became the basis for a riveting if cacophonous musical score for piano, violin, and synthesizer¹. Greenhouses also served as tools for public communication on climate change, in this case by using the simulated environments of future centuries to demonstrate the effects on living (or dying) plants. Evening sessions held at the San Francisco Exploratorium and the controlled habitats of the California Academy of Sciences natural history museum provided richly textured backdrops for equally rich discussions.   At the ITER booth, hundreds of journalists and other attendees dropped by to take a virtual tour of the worksite, watch films on fusion, and ask questions of the ITER communication team. For many, it was their first introduction to the project; others knew about ITER, but had not fully understood its technological or managerial complexity. The experience of "flying" through the Tokamak Pit via Oculus Rift made the physical dimensions of the future reactor far more understandable and impressive.   Naturally, a fair number of sceptics also showed up, with the characteristic jokes about fusion being "always 50 years away." More than a few were converted—or, at a minimum, stunned into congratulations—to see the physical progress in ITER manufacturing and construction. Journalists from multiple countries expressed pride when they learned for the first time of their own country's substantial contributions: components in shipment from companies they knew, or already installed as part of ITER's emerging systems. One of the most common sentiments expressed was: "Why aren't we hearing more about ITER as a model for international science collaboration?"   A particular treat was a special showing of "Let There Be Light," the documentary from the Canadian EyeSteelFilms on fusion and ITER, at the historical Alamo Drafthouse Theater in the Mission District. While the film offers an honest portrayal of the difficulties and challenges of making fusion a reality, especially at ITER's massive scale, the journalists in attendance said they found the human narrative inspiring, and understood for the first time what drives fusion scientists and engineers to persevere.   On Sunday, the final day of the conference, a panel held at the University of California at Berkeley delved into the challenges and opportunities of nuclear technology. Led by Senne Starckx, who had visited ITER as part of the Media Days in October, the panel included fusion and ITER in a multi-faceted discussion. The central question was not the technologies, per se, but rather the journalists: should reporting focus on the science and technology? On the economics? On the politics? Or on the topics perceived to be of most interest to a general public, such as safety, waste, and climate impact? In this session as well, it was clear that fusion—and the ITER Project—are less well known to most audiences, including to journalists, than other cutting-edge technologies.   With more than 1,300 participants, the conference was a remarkable opportunity to both expand the network of ITER supporters and learn from other science communicators. The announcement on Saturday—that the next WCSJ will be held at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EFPL) in Switzerland in 2019—was welcome news. ITER will have an opportunity to participate again, even more prominently: perhaps as a featured field trip for journalists, scheduled just as the ITER Project enters its machine assembly phase. ¹Change of Atmosphere: the ClimateMusic Project. More information here.

Eleven storage tanks have been delivered by the European Domestic Agency in the past year for the ITER cryoplant, including two this past week. The fabrication of the tanks for the ITER cryoplant was undertaken by European contractor Air Liquide and its subcontractors in such faraway locations as Sweden, the Czech Republic, China and Turkey, while logistics were handled by ITER's global logistics provider, DAHER.   One of the most technically challenging tanks will be capable of storing up to 20 tonnes of liquid helium (LHe), or 85 percent of the 24 tonnes of liquid helium that will be circulating in the ITER installation during operation. The double-wall vessel measures 25 metres in length.   The ITER cryoplant, under construction now, comprises 5,400 m² of covered buildings plus a large exterior area for the storage of helium and nitrogen. Ten other tanks—six gaseous helium (GHe) tanks, one liquid nitrogen tank (LN2), one gaseous nitrogen tank (GN2), and two quench tanks for the storage of helium expelled from the ITER magnets in the case of a quench—are also needed as part of the cryoplant infrastructure.   The ITER cryoplant will provide liquid helium and liquid nitrogen to major clients for cooling. Cooling fluids generated in the cryoplant will travel along process lines installed 13 metres above platform level on a bridge that runs to the Tokamak Building; from there, approximately five kilometres of cryolines will distribute gas and liquid helium to the different "users." The ITER magnets will consume 45 percent of cryogenic power followed by the thermal shield (40 percent) and the cryopumps (15 percent).   The tanks will be installed in a 2,600 m² exterior storage area near the cryoplant, where a concrete platform has been prepared. Read the full report on the European Domestic Agency website.

Cybercrime is not just the domain of thriller authors who have exploited the theme since the dawn of the computer age. In today's interconnected world threats from cyberspace are a daily occurrence and everyone—individuals and big companies alike—needs to guard against unwanted intrusions. At ITER, IT security is in a good shape, says Romain Bourgue. We've all experienced the annoyance of a virus on our home computers. To defend against another attack we keep our computers updated, arm them with the latest antivirus software, and make sure our information is safely stored in second or even third copy on external devices.   The situation is much more serious when a big company's IT security is breached. "The consequences can be far-reaching," says Romain Bourgue, responsible for IT security at ITER. "A virus in an industrial information system can translate into losing the control of a vital piece of equipment like a pump, a lift or a crane. Effective protection of all IT assets is crucial for the entire ITER Project."   When Bourgue joined ITER in 2016, an initial status check of ITER's information system confirmed that it was adequately protected. But, there was no reason to be complacent. "Cyber threats are a constant challenge," he says. "Every day we detect and deter up to 70,000 attacks on our IT systems."   "In addition, of the 60,000 emails received from the outside every day only a tenth reaches ITER email accounts. We reject the remaining 90 percent because of spam or malicious software, so-called malware."   How then do we maintain the high-level protection of ITER's roughly 3,000 computers—including its 600 servers—against this constant barrage of cyber warfare? Just as with your home computer, regular software updates and data backups are the backbone of IT systems protection. But there is always the specter of emerging threats or targeted attacks going undetected. That is why constant monitoring is a key element of cyber security. It helps to detect early signs of a compromise and take proactive actions to prevent a breach.   New threats in the cyber world pop up like mushrooms. It is impossible to predict what the next one will be and where it will strike. So how do you prepare for the unknown? "We are aiming to limit our exposure and control our environment," says Bourgue. "This may at times appear restrictive."   Several rows of dark sleek cabinets in the basement of the ITER building host some of ITER's 600 servers. One such measure is the constraint on administrator rights for individual computers. "It's a way to protect ourselves against threats that would leverage administrator rights," explains Bourgue.   Bourgue has also taken to simulating attacks on the IT system. "Like a good locksmith needs to understand how a lock works, we need to understand how our security reacts when a breach occurs," says Bourgue. Such scenarios help to monitor and test ITER's IT security.   The challenge for an IT security system is to find the right balance between usability of the IT system and alignment with overall project needs. ITER's computer network needs to be secure, but the user's productivity should not be impacted.   For Bourgue the user is a key player when it comes to IT security. Whether in front of a computer screen in an office or at a switchboard on the worksite, each and every IT user at ITER needs to stay alert. "As users of IT equipment, we are the first line of defense," says Bourgue.   Over the next five years, Bourgue will implement new IT security measures to keep in line with the demands of the growing project and the ever-increasing number of cyber challenges. He envisages a security operations centre and regular IT security training courses to ensure the IT awareness of all staff.   As if on cue, Bourgue's laptop sounds an alert. "Someone is trying to connect to a website that does bitcoin mining. It's probably malware." Never a dull moment for IT security.

An update on ITER has been published in the Autumn 2017 issue of Energy Focus, the flagship magazine of the UK-based Energy Industries Council. Titled "Is Fusion the Fuel of the Future?" the article describes recent project performance, concerns about the effect of Brexit, and why it's all worth it. You can read the article on line at Energy Focus (pp 46-47).