A project as complex as ITER, with activities spread over three continents and players speaking some thirty different languages, relies heavily on the quality of communication.   The ITER central team, Domestic Agencies, industrial contractors and laboratories throughout the world are engaged in constant dialogue: a huge flow of information travels back and forth through phone calls, emails, video conferences and synchronized databases.   The men and women working on the project also travel and meet on a regular basis: Domestic Agency heads and their closest collaborators spend approximately one week every month at ITER Headquarters in southern France and technical officers visit colleagues and contractors whenever close personal interaction is required.   It is a rare event, however, that sees all ITER players gathered in one place, with time to spare for both formal and informal meetings and, perhaps above all, a "mental availability" that brings added value to every encounter and conversation.   On 8-11 February, the Monaco-ITER International Fusion Days (MIIFED), coupled with the ITER Business Forum (IBF) provided such an opportunity. Held in the Principality of Monaco, the joint conference attracted 556 participants, representing 285 companies or labs from 26 countries.   653 one-to-one meetings, either business-to-business or business-to-customer, were held during the first three days of the conference. MIIFED-IBF 2016 turned out to be more than the sum of its parts—the dual event was more about synergy than compilation. Current or potential ITER contractors who traditionally attend the annual IBF conference (the first edition was held in 2007) gained a panoramic view of the ITER Project through the many presentations, round tables and thematic sessions that have been the trademark of MIIFED since the first edition in 2010. For those who had attended MIIFED in the past, including project actors, laboratories, universities and other large scientific collaborations, the three-day event was an occasion to directly, and personally, interact with a large array of industry representatives.   "It's like putting together the pieces of the puzzle," explains Shane Hritz, the international sales director of Lake Shore Cryotronics, a US-based company specialized in cryogenic temperature sensors, probes and controllers. "As a contractor for General Atomics and Air Liquide, I know what ITER is about. But when you come here, you see the whole scope of things, the progress, the excitement... you get this feeling of 'It's going to happen'!"   Like Shane, François Genevey, the ITER project manager for logistics provider DAHER considers that one can't build a genuine, person-to-person relationship through technology only. "In a phone call or a video conference you miss the non-verbal interaction, the body language... When you actually meet people, like we've been doing for three days here, you establish a relationship that will make future phone conversations or email exchanges more direct, confident and efficient."   Another advantage of MIIFED-IBF is the easy access to the upper strata of industry/Domestic Agency management. "People are more accessible in the context of this conference. A friendly chat over a cup of coffee sometimes brings more benefits than a discussion in a director's office. Of course you need both, but one can set the tone for—and ease—the other."   Two factory visits (SIMIC, in Italy, and CNIM, in France) and a visit to the ITER site were part of the optional program, providing a unique opportunity to witness manufacturing or construction progress. (Pictured: the visit to SIMIC.) MIIFED-IBF is both about quantity and quality. "It's the only conference where one can access the whole environment of the ITER Project," says Jean-François Renaux of Nexans, one of the world leaders in cable manufacturing. "And our interest goes beyond ITER: by attending this conference, we let potential customers know that we too are involved in the project."   On 12 February, the choice of two "technical tours" (SIMIC, in Camerana, Italy and CNIM in La Seyne-sur-Mer, France, both currently manufacturing the toroidal field coil radial plates) or a visit to the ITER site provided the concrete opportunity to witness manufacturing and construction progress.   The 556 participants to MIIFED-IBF had submitted close to 2,000 requests for one-to-one meetings, either B2B ("business-to-business") between industrial companies or B2C ("business to customer") between companies and the ITER Organization or Domestic Agencies. Due to the constraints of individual agendas, 653 were actually held—the best ratio ever attained according to IBF organizers Sabine Portier and Philippe Olivier of Agence Iter France.   These figures, of course, do not include all the conversations and exchanges that took place during lunches, coffee breaks, intermissions, escalator rides or the short walk between the Grimaldi conference centre and the hotels ...   Click here to view a video of MIIFED-IBF 2016 in Monaco

A few hundred metres from where the ITER Tokamak Complex is rising, a fusion plasma will light up before the end of this year.It will happen in a machine that has written some of fusion history's most brilliant pages. Tore Supra, which began operating in 1988, was the first tokamak to be equipped with superconducting coils and to later be fitted with actively-cooled plasma-facing components. In December 2003, the CEA-Euratom installation achieved a record plasma pulse that lasted 6 minutes and 30 seconds. Over the past three years, the near 30-year-old machine has undergone a significant overhaul. In order to serve as a test bench for ITER, Tore Supra has traded its carbon-carbon fibre (CFC) "limiter" for an ITER-like tungsten divertor. As the construction of the WEST platform (W Environment in Steady-state Tokamak, where "W" is the chemical symbol of tungsten) approaches completion, the time has come for submitting experimental and modelling proposals for the first phase (2016-2017) of the platform's exploitation. "We have identified and proposed high-priority research areas such as heat load pattern characterization, wall protection systems, radiofrequency heating or preparatory work for long-pulse operation," explain task force leaders Emmanuelle Tsitrone and Clarisse Bourdelle who organized a seminar at ITER Headquarters on 1 February. "The call, however, is open to innovative ideas for making the best use of WEST's specific features." The WEST team is planning phased operation. In Phase 1, WEST will operate with a mix of actively cooled ITER-like tungsten divertor elements and inertial tungsten-coated divertor start-up elements. In this phase, full power will be available, but plasma operation will be limited in time by the inertial divertor elements (typically ~10 seconds at high power). In Phase 2, the full actively cooled ITER-like tungsten divertor will be available allowing long-pulse operation, up to 1,000 seconds.  The WEST project and its research plan are open to the international fusion community. More information on the WEST call for proposals. 

Click here to view a video of the 2016 Monaco ITER International Fusion Energy Days (MIIFED) coupled this year with the ITER Business Forum.

Manufacturing is underway in Europe on over 1,000 steel forgings that will go into the assembly of the European vacuum vessel sectors. Weighing up to 10 metric tons for the heaviest, and varying widely in size and shape, these forgings are required for the first three vacuum vessel sectors under European responsibility. At subcontractors Rolf Kind GmbH (Germany), Acciaierie Valbruna (Italy) and ThyssenKrupp (Germany), the process begins with mixing pellets of chromium, nickel and steel to make 316 LN, an ITER-grade of stainless steel with low carbon and high nitrogen content. The mixture is heated to temperatures of approximately 1,500 °C and poured into block moulds for cooling. These blocks are in turn heated to 1,000 °C and formed into the required shape using a technique called hot pressing. The forgings produced by the sub-contractors will be shipped to Mangiarotti S.p.A and Walter Tosto S.p.A for machining. The AMW consortium (Ansaldo Nucleare S.p.A, Mangiarotti, Walter Tosto) was chosen in 2010 by the European Domestic Agency to manufacture Europe's contribution to the ITER vacuum vessel—that is, seven of the nine sectors (Korea is producing the two others). When machining is completed, the forgings will be welded together to create the four segments that make up each vacuum vessel sector (around 300 metric tons of forgings per 500-tonne sector). See the full article on the European Domestic Agency website.

This heart-shaped dust particle was captured by ion microbam scan on a divertor tile in the JET tokamak.   A team of researchers from the Croatian Fusion Research Unit—Stjepko Fazinić, Ivan Sudić and Tonči Tadić (Ruđer Bošković Institute)—in cooperation with their colleague Per Petersson from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden "caught" a fusion heart during an experiment at JET in December 2015. Measuring 100 by 120 micrometres, the dust particle is made mainly of tungsten, nickel, chromium, molybdenum and iron, with traces of beryllium, aluminium, copper and sodium. The Joint European Torus is currently the world's largest operational magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment, located at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire, UK. As a joint venture, JET is collectively used by more than 40 European laboratories. The European Consortium for the Development of Fusion Energy EUROfusion provides the work platform to exploit JET in an efficient and focused way. As a consequence more than 350 scientists and engineers from all over Europe currently contribute to the JET program. Read the original story on the Ruđer Bošković Institute website.

As work on the foundations of the ITER cryoplant advances on site, industrial partners around the world are making progress on the different manufactured elements of what will be the largest concentrated cryogenic system in the world. The ITER cryoplant is composed of helium and nitrogen refrigerators combined with a 80 K helium loop. Three helium refrigerators supply the required cooling power via an interconnection box providing the interface to the cryodistribution system; two nitrogen refrigerators provide cooling power for the thermal shields and the 80 K pre-cooling of the helium refrigerators. The ITER cryogenic system will be capable of providing cooling power at three different temperature levels: 4 K, 50K and 80K. The cryoplant is also a wide international collaboration, with Europe procuring the Liquid Nitrogen Facility (LN2) and auxiliary systems, India procuring the interconnecting lines and cryodistribution equipment, and the ITER Organization directly procuring the Liquid Helium (LHe) plant. Under contract to Air Liquide Global E&C Solutions France, chosen by the European Domestic Agency to manufacture the LN2 plant, the Indian company Flowserve has produced six valves that will control the helium flow from the 80K loop boxes to the thermal shields and cryopumps of the ITER machine. These valves are nearly five times bigger than the average cryogenic valve found on a standard helium liquefier, measuring 2.5 metres in height and weighing more than 1.5 metric tons. Maximum flow-through attains 4.4 kg/second, more than twice what is normally released through a helium valve in even the biggest helium liquefiers.  The ITER Organization coordinated the inspection of the valves, which are now on their way to China to be assembled with other equipment. Read the original story on the European Domestic Agency website.

The European Commission had established a panel of independent high-level experts to evaluate the Euratom research program comprising fission and fusion research. The findings, which were recently published, are more than a pat on the back for Europe's fusion research activities, especially with regard to EUROfusion's flagship device the Joint European Torus (JET) and the Roadmap to the realisation of fusion energy. The panel's findings place JET firmly at the heart of Europe's fusion research activities and underline its role as the device that is crucial to the developments at ITER. JET is currently the largest operating tokamak in Europe and also the only machine that is capable of carrying out experiments using the deuterium-tritium (D-T) fuel. And because D-T is the fuel of choice for a fusion reactor, results from the upcoming D-T experiments in JET will provide the know-how pertinent to ITER experiments. In addition, JET's ITER-like plasma-facing wall, its tungsten divertors, and its highly sophisticated remote-handling systems are all features that will lend invaluable knowledge and experience relevant to ITER. Another facet the panel recognized as important is the European Fusion Roadmap which looks to steer the fusion program from being solely laboratory-based and science-driven to include industry and technology in its fold. The roadmap, which has been put together with inputs from all the EUROfusion consortium members, looks to solidify collaboration with industry in areas ranging from standardization of parts to plant design and integration and materials development. Also featuring prominently in the Fusion Roadmap is the role of JET as the testing ground for ITER operation— an aspect that is completely aligned with the panel's findings. The independent panel's evaluation strongly backs this endorsement stating that "the decision to extend the use of JET to support the development of ITER was not only correct but essential." It further goes on to say that "high priority should be given to keeping JET operating until the design for ITER has been finalized and ITER has been successfully commissioned." Read the original story at EUROfusion.