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After designating 2022 as the "International Year of Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development (IYBSSD)," the United Nations (UN) General Assembly has now proclaimed 2024 to 2033 as the "International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development (IDSSD)," acknowledging the imperative to "create bridges accross scientific disciplines and knowledge forms in order to address the complex and intricate challenges of our time."

Recognizing that developing countries face specific challenges in accessing new sciences and technologies, the resolution—proposed by Argentina, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Serbia, South Africa, Spain and Vietnam—proclaims the International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development represents "a unique opportunity for humanity to use the critical role that sciences play in the pursuit of sustainable development in its three dimensions as one of the key means of implementation as well as in responding to the complex challenges of our time to ensure a safe and prosperous future for all."

The ITER Organization is one of many scientific organizations that supports the IYBSSD.

Read the UN declaration in English here.

The technical program of the 28th International Conference on Magnet Technology (MT-28) will kick off in Aix-en-Provence, France, on 11 September 2023. Interest has been high, with nearly 1,000 registered participants and extensive paper submissions. Plenary talks, topic sessions, short courses and an industrial exhibition are all on the schedule.

Registration is still available on line through Tuesday, 5 September.

For members of the press, please contact Sabina Griffith (sabina.griffith@iter.org) to be kept abreast of the planned press event.

JET, the Joint European Torus in Culham, Oxfordshire (UK), has just kicked off a third and final campaign in deuterium and tritium. The planned experiments, known as "DTE3," will run for seven weeks and focus on plasma science, materials science, and neutronics.

This campaign comes just 20 months after JET demonstrated sustained fusion over five seconds at high power and set a world record. In June, JET celebrated 40 years of science.

JET's research findings have been critical to planning at ITER, as well as to that of the UK's prototype fusion powerplant STEP, the European DEMO prototype fusion plant, and other national laboratory and private projects around the world.  

Repurposing and decomissioning activities on JET are scheduled to begin in 2024. 

See the announcement on the UKAEA/Culham Centre for Fusion Energy website.

For the third year in a row, the Department of Physics at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) has held its Fusion Energy Summer Camp for high school students.

19 participants aged 16 to 19 got to work as researchers and conduct experiments on DTU's small, and Scandinavia's only, NORTH tokamak. From early morning to late evening, from 30 July to 4 August, they followed lectures, practiced problem solving and programming in fusion energy and plasma physics, and participated in experiments, while also having fun and getting a taste of university life on campus.

The DTU Physics teams thanks the Novo Nordisk Foundation for its generous support in helping to inspire the young generation to consider an education in science and engineering and be part of the push to develop a sustainable future.

--Søren Bang Korsholm, Senior Scientist, and Alexander Simon Thrysøe, Scientist at DTU Physics.

Photo: Students are introduced to the NORdic Tokamak device (NORTH) that is enriching the physics and engineering programs at the Technical University of Denmark. Credit: Magnus Møller 

The transition to superconducting has been observed in the JT-60SA's central solenoid and toroidal field magnets, according to reporting by the team.

Superconductivity is a natural property of certain metals, alloys and ceramics when cooled below a defined "critical temperature." Below the critical temperature—which varies for each material—electrical resistance drops to zero, allowing these materials to carry large amounts of electrical current without losing energy.

JT-60SA's central solenoid is wound from niobium tin (Nb3Sn) cable-in-conduit conductor, which in the absence of any magnetic field becomes superconducting at about 18 K (-255°C). Early on 22 July the four modules of the central solenoid reached this temperature and the resistance of the magnets dropped to almost zero. The superconducting transition for the tokamak's 18 toroidal field coils and 6 equilibrium field coils (made from niobium titanium (NbTi) cable-in-conduit conductor) occurred at about 9 K (-264°C) on 24 July.

The JT-60SA tokamak is a joint program of fusion research and development agreed and co-financed by the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) and the government of Japan.

See the full report on this JT-60SA webpage.