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The Wendelstein 7-X stellarator facility at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Greifswald, Germany, is preparing for higher heating power and longer plasma pulses.

After a successful campaign that ended in late 2018—during which operators were able to achieve discharge times of up to 100 seconds (2 MW of input heating power) or 30 seconds at 6 MW—the Wendelstein 7-X team is now preparing to install actively water-cooled components inside the vacuum vessel that will allow the next round of experiments to generate plasma pulses of up to 30 minutes.

The previous cladding made of carbon tiles has now been removed, and the vessel is ready for the installation of the new water-cooled protective elements. Chief among them is the new divertor, a highly technical component made of plasma-facing front tiles mounted on water-cooled back plates—assemblies made of nearly 500,000 parts, which were the object of more than 15 years of development, fabrication and testing.

Commissioning of the upgraded facility is expected to begin early next year.

Read the full article on the IPP Greifswald website.

--Cooling elements on the back side of a divertor plate. Photo: IPP, Michael Herdlein

The latest 30-minute episode  of the fusion podcast A Glass of Seawater discusses plans for a new compact fusion reactor at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy.   In October 2019, the UK government announced a £220 million funding package for the concept design phase of STEP—the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production. Building on the operation of the new MAST Upgrade spherical tokamak experiment and on ITER, the program aims to design and build a commercially viable fusion power station by 2040.   Ian Chapman, CEO of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, joins doctoral researchers from the Fusion CDT* program to discuss the hopes and ambitions for STEP.    * Five UK universities—Durham, Liverpool, Manchester, Oxford, and York—have joined within FUSION CDT to offer doctoral training in fusion-relevant disciplines such as plasma physics, material science, nuclear physics, technology, laser physics, and instrumentation.   Listen to A Glass of Seawater's "STEPisode" episode here. Learn more about Fusion CDT here.