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​Diamonds are highly sought after as jewelry and as a form of capital investment. They are also prized by the research community, but not because of their brilliance or symbolic significance — it is their physical properties that make these gems precious to scientists.

Diamonds are extremely hard, have unrivaled thermal conductivity and have a broadband spectral transparency that stretches from ultraviolet to far infrared, making them the ideal material for a host of different applications. Consequently, there is a large market for synthetic diamonds: they can cut through steel as if it were paper, dig their way through the earth on the tips of drilling heads, are used as scalpels in operations and can act as bio-electrochemical sensors for detecting substances such as DNA.

Read more here.

​Holi Hai!!  

Holi, the Indian festival of colours (also known as the festival of love), is a celebration of the arrival of Spring. The festival symbolizes happiness and brings together families and friends for delicious food and lots of fun.   On Sunday, 16 March near Manosque, nearly 50 people—ITER staff from India, friends and families—gathered to celebrate this most colourful holiday.

 

 

 

​During a recent visit to China, ITER Director-General Osamu Motojima met with high-level representatives of government and had the opportunity to visit some of the factories where fabrication is underway on components within the Chinese scope.

On March 5, 2014, Vice Minister Jianlin Cao of MOST, head of the Chinese delegation to the ITER Council, received the Director-General and colleagues Ju Jin, ITER Deputy Director-General, Sachiko Ishizaka, Secretary to the ITER Council, and members of the Project Control Division for an exchange of views on recent developments in the ITER Project. The following day, the ITER Director-General visited the headquarters of China National Nuclear Corporation in Beijing, meeting with Chief Engineer Zengguang Lei and ITER Management Advisory Committee (MAC) Chair Jiashu Tian.   During his three-day stay he was also able to pay visits to Western Superconducting Technologies in Xi'an City, the company responsible for the manufacturing of ITER superconducting strand, and Nantong Shenhai Science and Industrial Technology, responsible for the surface-plating of ITER niobium-tin and niobium-titanium superconducting strands.  

​In the Spring issue of InFusion, a publication from the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE), Mike Walsh, head of the ITER Diagnostic Division and Neill Taylor, former Division head of Nuclear Safety and Analysis, reflect on their experiences at ITER.  

Read it here (p.12-13).