Exactly 30 years after the November 1985 Geneva Summit gave government-level impetus to the world's largest collaborative effort in fusion science, the governing body of the ITER Organization—the ITER Council—convened for the seventeenth time. The meeting on 18 and 19 November brought representatives from China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States to the site of the ITER Project in Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France, where construction activities on the scientific facility have accelerated in recent months. Discussion over the two days focused, as planned, on the ITER project schedule. Since his arrival at the head of the ITER Organization in March 2015, Director-General Bernard Bigot had promised to present the Council with an updated project plan, one that integrated accumulated delays with the scope, cost and schedule for the project going forward.   This effort was successfully accomplished in eight months through the coordinated efforts of the ITER Central Team, based in France, and the seven Domestic Agencies. The exercise itself was an example of the close collaboration that the Director-General has tried to instill as part of a new, success-oriented "project culture."   "We were able to keep our commitment to the Council at the needed level of quality and in the limited amount of time we set for ourselves," stated Director-General Bernard Bigot in his opening remarks. "To do so required the integrated scientific insight, engineering skills, and managerial competencies of every part of the organization. As a team, we performed a bottom-up assessment of the project. As a team, we found solutions to design challenges. As a team, we conducted an exhaustive and comprehensive Integrated Review. We have taken the first essential steps toward establishing a much-needed project culture."   The Council was the last meeting for Chair Robert Iotti, from the US (here with Council Secretary Sachiko Ishizaka). He will be succeeded by Won Namkung, from Korea. As a result, there is now a much-improved understanding of the scope, sequencing, risks, and costs of the ITER Project, acknowledged the Council, which commended the ITER Organization and the Domestic Agencies for their intensive efforts. The updated long-term schedule, and associated budget and staffing resources, will now be the object of an independent review mandated by the Council. Until the Council completes its analysis, no definitive project schedule can be announced. "Of course we could not expect immediate approval of our proposals related to schedule, budget, and staffing," stressed the Director-General to the press after the meeting. "A fully qualified panel of experts will now look at the proposed schedule to verify the consistency and reliability, and also to see if there are areas that can be improved or accelerated. ITER is a funded through public investment and this level of scrutiny is absolutely to be expected."   In order to keep up project momentum while discussions are underway on the long-term schedule, the Council approved a schedule and milestones covering 2016 and 2017. The Council also approved a re-allocation of existing resources to meet these milestones, and the hiring of nearly 150 additional staff.   Project progress will be controlled and reported for the coming two years on the basis of 29 "high-level" milestones. Whether related to construction (i.e., the award of the Construction Management-as-Agent (CMa) contract in 2016 or the beginning of work on the B1 basement level of the Tokamak Complex), manufacturing (i.e., the winding of the first central solenoid module) or transport (i.e., the delivery of piping to the ITER site), the milestones are underpinned in the updated schedule by the many thousands of activities that make up progress to First Plasma.   "Milestones are a way of managing a project that is a large and as complex as ITER," says the Director-General. "Below the highest-level milestones are many different strata—approximately 250 milestones in the Level 1 schedule, 1,200 in the Level 2 schedule, and more than 150,000 sequences in the Level 3 schedule—each one a precisely defined task with an assigned owner. ITER is an industrial project now. My commitment to the Council is that the ITER Organization and the Domestic Agencies must never be the limiting step for suppliers to deliver. Instead, we will be catalysts for progress."   "We will be catalysts for progress," said ITER Director-General Bernard Bigot (right), seen here in conversation with Deputy Director-General and Chief Operating Officer Gyung-Su Lee. The Council plans to complete its review of the updated, resource-loaded long-term schedule and reach agreement on the overall schedule through First Plasma by its next meeting in June 2016. The seventeenth ITER Council was the last meeting for Chair Robert Iotti, from the US, who reaches the end of his two-year term on 31 December. All Council members expressed appreciation for his enormous personal engagement as Council Chair, as well as a long history of involvement with the project that dates back to the early engineering phase for ITER. "Bob became Council Chair at a challenging time—right after the Management Assessment in 2013 that had urged changes in both project management and governance—and he has worked tirelessly to see the recommendations implemented. He deserves great applause," said ITER Director-General Bernard Bigot after the meeting.   The Council elected Won Namkung, from Korea, as the next Chair of the ITER Council and Arun Srivastava, from India, as the next Vice-Chair.   Download the press release in English or in French.

The ITER magnet system requires cryogenic temperature and helium flow measurements to control and protect the cryogenic cooling of the coils, coil structures, busbars and current leads. The instruments that supply the measurements need to be accurate and reliable, and also capable of operating in the very harsh environment of the cryostat and the ITER magnet feeders. Although the measurement solutions planned for ITER are based on proven technologies, particular attention is being paid during the qualification phase to measurement performance, compliance with environmental constraints, and installation feasibility.   The cross section of a Venturi tube, used for helium flow measurements. All of the magnet instrumentation and control components are procured directly by the ITER Organization. As many of them will be installed by the ITER Domestic Agencies involved with coil and/or magnet feeder fabrication, the ITER Organization must—in addition to procuring the instrumentation—manage the delivery of the components in due accordance with supplier manufacturing schedules.   A temperature sensor and its support. Some 2,200 cryogenic temperature measurement chains are included in the scope of the contract between the ITER Organization and the CEA. The ITER Organization has selected the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, CEA, as the supplier for both the cryogenic thermometers and the Venturi tubes for helium flow measurement. Two contracts have been placed, whose scope encompasses the design, qualification, calibration and fabrication of 2,200 cryogenic temperature measurement chains (a sequence of components) and 280 Venturi tubes.   Today these two contracts are running smoothly: the design phase for both is fully completed, and temperature sensor supports are routinely delivered to the Domestic Agencies. The manufacture of the Venturi tubes will start next month and series production for the temperature sensors in early 2016. This success has been made possible thanks to the efficient collaboration between the ITER Organization and the CEA.

ITER will be the first fusion device to test tritium breeding—an essential technology for the fusion reactors of the future. While the fusion fuel deuterium can be distilled from all forms of water, tritium occurs only in trace quantities in nature.Scientists know that tritium can be produced during the fusion reaction through contact with lithium: tritium is produced, or "bred," when neutrons escaping the plasma interact with lithium contained in the blanket wall of the tokamak.Six tritium breeding concepts will be tested during the deuterium-tritium phase of ITER operation. Of these, the European Domestic Agency is responsible for two.Europe is considering the use of EUROFER97 as the candidate steel material for its tritium breeding modules. Among its many advantages, this steel responds well to neutron activation and offers good resistance to neutron irradiation. It is compatible with liquid metal and ceramic breeders and its properties seem to respond well at high temperatures.Through a contract signed with Studsvik (Sweden), a series of tests will be performed to learn more about the physical and mechanical properties of EUROFER97. Studsvik and NRG, its subcontractor, were awarded a contract in October by Europe for a detailed technical analysis. The tests are expected to last five years.NRG will irradiate specimens in the High Flux Reactor in Petten (The Netherlands) under controlled conditions similar to those in ITER. After irradiation, the material samples will be transported to Studsvik for post-irradiation examination and characterization. The tests and examination will quantify the level at which neutron irradiation affects fatigue properties or fracture toughness, causes deformation, and/or influences the mechanical properties of this potential structural material for the blankets of future fusion reactors.Read the original article on the European Domestic Agency website.

One of the most spectacular operations ever performed on the ITER site was the lifting of the Assembly Hall roof structure during the night of 10 to 11 September 2015. Hoisting the 700-ton structure to a height of 60 metres was a long and delicate operation monitored and controlled by computer. This video, produced by the companies and organizations involved in the operation, captures the technical achievement as it unfolded.

​The editorial board of the journal Nuclear Fusion has selected Rob Goldston, a fusion researcher and Princeton University professor of astrophysical sciences, as winner of the 2015 Nuclear Fusion Award. The award recognizes Goldston's paper describing a new model for estimating the width of the scrape-off layer — the hot plasma that is exhausted in fusion facilities called tokamaks — as the most outstanding paper published by the journal in 2012. The journal will present the honor, which includes an engraved award, a certificate and $2,500, during the 2016 Fusion Energy Conference in Kyoto, Japan. On receiving the reward Goldston said, "It is a great pleasure to win this scientific award for a paper written three years after I stepped down from my leadership post at PPPL. It is fun to be back in the fray working with top-quality scientists, helping to make sense of very important, and very carefully measured, data." Read the full article on the PPPL website.

​The ITER vacuum vessel is composed of nine sectors, two of which are being procured by Korea and seven by Europe. In Italy, production of a first sector has begun at the AMW consortium (Ansaldo - Mangiarotti - Walter Tosto). Click here to watch a video of manufacturing progress at AMW.