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​​In this five-minute video produced by the European Domestic Agency for ITER, the type of specialized robotics, networks and virtual reality techniques used in deep sea or space operations find their application for ITER, where remote handling will be used to perform maintenance, inspection and repair tasks.

The European agency is responsible for delivering four remote handling systems to ITER: the divertor remote handling system, the neutral beam remote handling system, the cask transfer system for activated components, and the in-vessel viewing and metrology system—in all, about EUR 250 million of investment.

Recently, conclusive tests were carried out at the VTT Technical Research Centre in Tampere, Finland for the remote handling of ITER divertor cassettes—10-ton components that must be installed and/or exchanged through high-tech robotics. 

Watch the video here.

​The signature nuclear fusion experiment at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab is expected to relaunch this summer after being shuttered for upgrades for about three years.

When it reopens, the reactor there will be the most powerful of its kind in the world, lab directors say.

"We expect to start up probably toward the end of June. We'll do the initial tests that will get us toward research operations, and (research) will start later in the summer, let's say August time frame, maybe mid-September," said Adam Cohen, chief operating officer for the lab.

The National Spherical Torus Experiment, also known as NSTX, is a plasma in the shape of a cored apple heated to between 50 million and 100 million degrees.

The experiment's $94 million upgrade bought a stronger magnet for the plasma's nuclear reactor and a second neutral beam accelerator to heat plasma even further.

Read the whole article on the Newsworks website.

​As part of a Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) project, a partnership between the US Department of Energy's Advanced Scientific Computing Research Leadership Computing Challenge and Fusion Energy Sciences programs, researchers are using the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility's (OLCF's) Titan supercomputer to try to get closer to producing sustainable fusion for electricity.

 

The project, led by Brian Wirth, a researcher with the University of Tennessee and DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, brings researchers from various organizations together to work on different aspects of the ITER experimental fusion reactor.

... Wirth and his collaborators are using Titan, a Cray XK7 supercomputer capable of 27 petaflops, or 27 quadrillion calculations per second, to shed light on how fusion plasma interacts with the materials used to build the reactor. Specifically, they're investigating how tungsten—one of the toughest materials known—will be affected by the plasma over time.   As helium particles bombard the tungsten wall, they begin to form clusters within the material. Once a helium atom is embedded in the wall, it attracts other helium particles. When enough helium is bunched together, it can "knock out" a tungsten atom from its normal position within the material, forming a nanoscale cavity, or hole, within the tungsten.   Read the full report published on the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's website here.

Ten years ago this month, a group of industrial nations agreed on the location for the world's largest nuclear-fusion experiment: ITER, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, which they had decided to build jointly. Today, roughly €4 billion worth of construction contracts and €3 billion in manufacturing contracts worldwide are underway and the first large components are being delivered to the site at St-Paul-lez-Durance in southern France. Faced with slippage in the schedule—despite the best efforts of the more than 2,000 dedicated people working on ITER—in March 2015 the ITER Council moved to appoint Bernard Bigot, from France, to the top management position of the project. In this Comment in Nature, published on 11 June, the new ITER Director-General explains how he will strengthen leadership and management to refocus the project's aim of harnessing nuclear fusion.