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​The February issue of Fusion for Energy newsletter is now online. Find out how contractors feel about ITER's business potential, read about top management changes in Barcelona, catch up on design reviews and more.

Operators at EAST, the Chinese superconducting tokamak, announced in the February issue of the EAST Newsletter that the auxiliary heating system has passed a national acceptance review and is officially stamped "well qualified" to enter operation.

Construction on the auxiliary heating system, which consists of 4 MW neutral beam injectors and 6 MW lower hybrid current drives, began in November 2011. The additional heating power on EAST will enable high-level plasma physics research including testing for ITER.

The acceptance panel commended the construction, complete "with high quality, within budget and one year ahead of schedule."

Aiming at long-pulse plasma discharges, a series of experimental techniques has been developed on EAST in recent years. Tremendous efforts have been made during past two years to enhance EAST's capabilities—nearly every sub-system except superconducting magnets has been upgraded or modified to enable higher performance and truly steady state operation.

Read the full article in the February issue of the EAST Newsletter, attached.

On 3 February 2015, FuseNet (the European Fusion Education Network) and ENEN (the European Nuclear Education Network) signed a Memorandum of Understanding at the General Assembly meeting of FuseNet that was held at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy. It marked the start for further cooperation between the European fusion and fission education networks.   ENEN is older than FuseNet, but similar in many ways. As the nuclear aspects of fusion energy become more prominent -- ITER is truly a nuclear device -- the need to provide fusion students and engineers with proper education and training in this field becomes ever larger. Likewise, nuclear engineers are in high demand in the fusion enterprises now, and they may benefit from a fusion training.   Prof. Walter Ambrosini (president of ENEN, left) and Prof. Niek Lopes Cardozo (president of FuseNet, right) sign the Memorandum of Understanding between the two networks.

 

Read more on the FuseNet website.

​February 11, 2015 marks five years in space for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which provides incredibly detailed images of the whole sun 24 hours a day. Capturing an image more than once per second, SDO has provided an unprecedentedly clear picture of how massive explosions on the sun grow and erupt ever since its launch on Feb. 11, 2010. The imagery is also captivating, allowing one to watch the constant ballet of solar material through the sun's atmosphere, the corona. 

In honor of SDO's fifth anniversary, NASA has released a video showcasing highlights from the last five years of sun watching. Watch the movie to see giant clouds of solar material hurled out into space, the dance of giant loops hovering in the corona, and huge sunspots growing and shrinking on the sun's surface. 

The imagery is an example of the kind of data that SDO provides to scientists. By watching the sun in different wavelengths — and therefore different temperatures — scientists can watch how material courses through the corona, which holds clues to what causes eruptions on the sun, what heats the sun's atmosphere up to 1,000 times hotter than its surface, and why the sun's magnetic fields are constantly on the move.

View the video on the NASA website.

​The ITER Business Forum 2015 (IBF/15) will take place in Marseille, France from 25 to 27 March 2015.

Already, close to 400 participants from 200 companies have registered to participate. (A real-time update is available here.)

The agenda is now finalized and includes 14 theme workshops bringing together more than one hundred speakers from the ITER Organization, the procurement agencies for ITER—the Domestic Agencies—and key suppliers.    Registration for one-to-one meetings, either "business to business" or "business to customers," will open in a few days.   IBF/15 is a unique occasion for companies to approach the ITER Project and to investigate possibilities for involvement or partnership around upcoming tender offers.

Visit the IBF/15 website for more information.

​The 42nd International Zvenigorod Conference for plasma physics and thermonuclear fusion was held on 9-13 February, near Moscow, Russia.

At this annual event, experts from inside Russia and from abroad gather to discuss recent achievements in the areas of high and low temperature plasma research, controlled fusion, and developments in plasma and beam technologies.

Part of the conference is traditionally devoted to progress in ITER. In the presence of Anatoly Krasilnikov, head of the Russian Domestic Agency, representatives from ITER Russia and from the research centres and industries involved in the project gave more than 50 oral presentations and reports on the first day of the conference on the progress in ITER procurement and manufacturing. Topics included the magnet system, in-vessel plasma-facing components, and diagnostic instruments.

The presentations generated wide interest among the members of the expert community, including representatives of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the State Corporation Rosatom and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

-- Alexander Petrov, ITER Russia