In the industrial outskirts of Padua, Italy, about 40 kilometres west of Venice, the long white buildings of the PRIMA Neutral Beam Test Facility are now ready to receive equipment, after a little over a year of construction activity.   At PRIMA, the components of ITER's most powerful heating system—neutral beam injection—will be tested in advance of ITER operation.  Europe, Japan and India are contributing all components according to the specifications of Procurement Arrangements signed with the ITER Organization; Italy is building the facility as a voluntary contribution to the neutral beam development program. The PRIMA facility is hosted by Consorzio RFX, an Italian research laboratory for plasma physics and controlled nuclear fusion.   Two test beds at PRIMA will help resolve challenging physics and technology issues and validate concepts before the neutral beam system is built at ITER. The first, SPIDER, will operate an ITER-scale radio-frequency negative ion source. After approximately two years from the start of SPIDER, a second facility, MITICA, will enter operation to test the 1:1-scale neutral beam injector at full acceleration voltage and power.   In Padua, Italy, the PRIMA complex will house the SPIDER and MITICA experiments, as well as facilities for power supplies, cryogenics, and cooling. Europe, Japan and India—which all have significant experience with neutral beam technology—are contributing the components based on specifications provided by the ITER Organization. Fabrication is now underway for all SPIDER components. Factory acceptance tests on the vacuum vessel are planned mid-year in Europe; delivery of the 100 kV power supply and beam dump (part of the Indian contribution) is expected at the end of year according to plan. For MITICA, all of the build-to-print mechanical components have reached the final design stage and were presented for review in January 2014. Following chit resolution, procurement of these components will be launched by the European Domestic Agency.   "This ambitious development program for neutral beam heating will allow us to acquire valuable information about neutral beam manufacturability and operation before we are called on to install and operate two heating neutral beam (HNB) injectors in ITER, as well as the diagnostics neutral beam (DNB)," says Deirdre Boilson, head of the Heating & Current Drive Division at ITER. "Already, as manufacturing for SPIDER is underway, we are learning important technical lessons that will directly serve the manufacturability of the beam sources of the DNB and HNBs."   All of the components for the PRIMA test beds belong to the ITER Organization. Once they've been delivered to the site in Padua and have passed acceptance tests, ownership responsibility will be transferred to the European Domestic Agency for the duration of SPIDER and MITICA operation.   "Neutral beam technology is key for ITER, but also for the next-stage fusion device," says Deirdre. "We're looking forward to PRIMA's experimental results, based on which we'll be able to move forward with full confidence to install and operate the neutral beam injectors on ITER."   Studying negative ion beam technology at ELISE At the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Science (IPP) in Garching, Germany, experiments underway on a half-size radio-frequency-driven negative ion source, ELISE, have made important contributions to the design of SPIDER and MITICA and to their future operation. In addition to this important research input, the R&D program funded by the European Domestic Agency is also making another important contribution to the neutral beam development program: offering important training opportunities to the scientists and engineers from Consorzio RFX.     Watch a recent video on ELISE from the European Domestic Agency here.

After years of calculation, planning, component production and installation, the Wendelstein 7-X project entered a new phase in May 2014: at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald, Germany, preparations started for operation of the world's largest fusion device of the stellarator type.   Wendelstein 7-X aims to show that, like tokamaks, stellarators are also a suitable concept for power plants. The complex structure of its magnetic field—the result of sophisticated optimization calculations—will be produced by a system of 50 unconventionally shaped superconducting magnet coils, the veritable technical core of the device.   Able to operate through discharges lasting half an hour, they will contribute to demonstrating the essential advantage of stellarators: continuous operation.   Companies from all around Europe produced the components for Wendelstein 7-X and numerous research facilities were involved in construction of the device.   In the audience (from left to right, front row): Prof. A. Smith, PPPL, USA; Dr. Richard Hawryluk, PPPL, USA; Prof. Osamu Motojima, Director-General, ITER Organization; Erwin Sellering, Prime Minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania; Prof. Dr. Peter Gruss, President of the Max Planck Society; Prof. Dr. Sibylle Günter, Scientific Director of IPP; Prof. Dr. Johanna Wanka, Federal Minister of Education and Research. Also present (not pictured), the former Technical Director of Wendelstein 7-X, Rem Haange, currently head of the ITER Project Department. At the beginning of May the cryostat was closed and the first pumps started up. An inauguration ceremony was held on 20 May in the presence of a large audience of national and international experts and guests of honour, including ITER Director-General Osamu Motojima, EU Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger, and Johanna Wanka, German Federal Minister of Education and Research.   If all goes well, Wendelstein 7-X will produce its first plasma in about a year. "We all know the trend of global development, the hunger for energy of emerging economies and emerging countries, the finite nature of natural resources, the need to curtail climate change and to live the principle of sustainability," said Professor Johanna Wanka, Federal Minister for Education and Research, in her keynote speech. "So when we talk about energy, we need research that keeps all options open. And one of these options is nuclear fusion. Wendelstein 7-X is an important step forward allowing us to better evaluate the "fusion option."

Pink is a colour that is not often used in the world of heavy industry, but special requests sometimes call for special measures. And so the Swiss company Kompaflex chose pink for its successful test campaign of ITER's mighty bellows.   Eighty-five large, rectangular bellows will be used between the ITER vacuum vessel, the cryostat and the walls of the Tokamak Building themselves to isolate the ultra-high vacuum inside the cryostat from the building port cell environment, and to compensate relative movement that can occur during different operational regimes and events (baking, cooldown).   The bellows will be made of multiple thin layers of 304/304L or Inconel steel that can absorb movements between the different structures up to a level of about 50 millimetres.   Large bellows will be used between the cryostat and the vacuum vessel—and between the cryostat and the building—to allow for thermal contraction and expansion in the structures. In order to confirm design readiness and to determine the feasibility of bellow manufacturing, an engineering contract was awarded to the Swiss expansion joint specialist Kompaflex AG based in Steinebrunn, near the shores of Lake Constance.   On 15 May, a full scale prototype bellow (shown as blue in the graphic at left), measuring 3.6 x 3.2 metres, was tested in the presence of representatives from the ITER Organization and the Indian Domestic Agency—the ITER Member that will have the responsibility of finally procuring the components.   The large weights of steel and concrete in the picture (painted pink) give an idea of the resulting force from the combined spring rates due to different relative movements. These spring rates were determined by design calculations, FEM analysis (used commonly in engineering) and 1:1 testing, and confirmed during the recent test campaign. Further tests on the prototype will follow to measure its stability under vacuum and to test helium leakage.

​ITER is the most complex experiment ever attempted on this planet. Its aim, to demonstrate that nuclear fusion, the power of the Sun, can give us pollution free energy that we can use for millions of years. But at the moment, it's still largely a vast building site in the Haut Provence of southern France ...Roland Pease has been to Cadarache to see how work is progressing, and to hear of the hopes of the scientists who have dedicated their working lives to the dream.Listen to the 30-minute documentary from the BBC World Service program Discovery here. 

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 : the WEST project (acronym derived from W Environment in Steady-state Tokamak, where W is the chemical symbol for tungsten).The goal is to equip the tokamak with an actively cooled tungsten divertor, benefitting from its unique long pulse capabilities, its high level of additional power and the unique experience of operation with actively cooled components.Read the latest news from the WEST project in the attached document.