Search

​Research by an international team led by SLAC and Stanford scientists has uncovered a new, unpredicted behavior in a copper oxide material that becomes superconducting — conducting electricity without any loss — at relatively high temperatures.

This new phenomenon — an unforeseen collective motion of electric charges coursing through the material — presents a challenge to scientists seeking to understand its origin and connection with high-temperature superconductivity. Their ultimate goal is to design a superconducting material that works at room temperature.   "Making a room-temperature superconductor would save the world enormous amounts of energy," said Thomas Devereaux, leader of the research team and director of the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences (SIMES), which is jointly run with SLAC. "But to do that we must understand what's happening inside the materials as they become superconducting. This result adds a new piece to this long-standing puzzle."   The results were published 19 October in Nature Physics.

 

Read the full article on the SLAC website.

​In the latest newsletter published by Korea's National Fusion Research Institute (NFRI), read how the KSTAR tokamak has topped 10,000 plasma generation experiments since 2009 and how tokamak technologies have found their way into applications in the food and defence industries.

The 7th issue of NFRI News is available here.

​Russia is developing a hybrid nuclear reactor that uses both nuclear fusion and fission, said head of leading nuclear research facility. The project is open for international collaboration, particularly from Chinese scientists.

A hybrid nuclear reactor is a sort of stepping stone to building a true nuclear fusion reactor. It uses a fusion reaction as a source of neutrons to initiate a fission reaction in a 'blanket' of traditional nuclear fuel.

The approach has a number of potential benefits in terms of safety, non-proliferation and cost of generated energy, and Russia is developing such a hybrid reactor, according to Mikhail Kovalchuk, director of the Kurchatov Research Center.

"Today we have started the realization of a distinctively new project. We are trying to combine a schematically operational nuclear plant reactor with a 'tokamak' to create a hybrid reactor," he told RIA Novosti, referring to a type of fusion reactor design.

Photo:  Director of the Kurchatov Research Center Mikhail Kovalchuk  Read the whole story on the Russia Today website and also (in Russian) on the Newsland website.

​Manufacturing is underway in India for the acceleration grid power supplies that will be supplied to the SPIDER test bed in Italy as well as to ITER's diagnostic neutral beam.

  The technical specifications for both acceleration grid power supplies are similar (system rated for 96 kVDC, 75 A). The SPIDER test bed is designed to finalize the development of the ion sources required for the ITER neutral beam injectors and to test all essential aspects of the diagnostic neutral beam accelerator.   Following the Final Design Review held in August 2013 for the acceleration grid power supplies, a Manufacturing Readiness Review was conducted early this year at the Indian Domestic Agency with the participation of the ITER Organization and ECIL, the Indian manufacturer responsible for the fabrication of the system and its installation at the SPIDER test bed in Padua, Italy.   Major components of the acceleration grid power supplies—60 kW water-cooled switched power supply modules and 2.8 MVA oil-cooled multi-secondary transformers—are presently being inspected at intermediate stages and the factory acceptance test for the first batch is scheduled for the end of November 2014.   Discussions are also being held with local support agencies for SPIDER site works with coordination assistance from the Consorzio RFX team in Padua.   Dilshad Sulaiman, ITER India      

The German science and engineering website Tau Omega recently featured a three-hour audio interview of ​ITER physicist Richard Pitts. The program focuses on the physics and the engineering challenges of ITER, but also addresses some of the unique organizational aspects of the project.