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The European Fusion Education Network, FuseNet, is organizing its third annual European Fusion Teacher Day on 14 October 2022. Open to all secondary school science and physics teachers in Europe, the fully virtual event aims to introduce educators to nuclear fusion and demonstrate how the subject can be taught in school. The ultimate goal is to increase exposure of students to the subject at the secondary level in order to spark interest and enthusiasm in the field.

Because the event is open to educators across Europe, the half-day program begins with local sessions via Zoom on what is going on in the field of fusion in your geographical zone. After the local sessions, participants will come together for a global livestream with presentations by keynote speakers and the distribution of free educational resources. The ITER Organization is one of the featured participants during the global livestream. 

Participation is free and registration is open now. Register before 1 October here.

On 19 September, the European Commission revealed the winners of the 2022 edition of the SOFT Innovation Prize. This prize, awarded at the 32nd Symposium on Fusion Technology (SOFT2022), gives recognition to outstanding researchers or industries who have found innovative ideas or proposed new solutions in fusion research.

This year's winners are:

First prize (€50,000): GRATUL (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Forschungszentrum Jülich) for the development of plasma sprayed, functionally graded tungsten/EUROFER coating as protective for the first wall of future fusion power plants. This technology was successfully transferred to industry, achieving a new record in coating large first wall mockups. The functional grading, which led to outstanding heat flux resistance, opens up the potential deployment of this innovation in other components of fusion technology, in high-voltage components, and in the concentrated solar power sector.

Second prize (€30,000): D1SUNED (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, UNED) for the development of an improved radiation transport code for dose rate evaluation in fusion application. Due to their high energy, fusion neutrons are penetrating deeply in the facility producing direct and indirect radiation fields whose evaluation is a challenging task. The D1SUNED provides a powerful tool to calculate and analyze these radiation fields required for safety and radioprotection studies that must be addressed properly during the design phase to secure successful licensing.

Third prize (€20,000): Dia Disk (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Diamond Materials GmbH) for the development of diamond window technology in high-power microwave applications as a vacuum barrier and confinement barrier for hazardous materials. The achieved higher disk diameter results in a substantially increased energy efficiency of the deposition process of diamond.

See the full announcement here.

On 15 September 2022, the US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources held a "Hearing on the Federal Government's Role in Supporting the Commercialization of Fusion Energy."

The Chairman of the Committee, Senator Joe Manchin, had visited the ITER Project in France in March 2022. He opened the meeting by evoking the visit, saying that it left him "profoundly reflective of the potential of [fusion] technology to transform our energy future." The purpose of the hearing was to hear from a panel of experts on what they are doing to bring this "exciting technology" to fruition and to ask: What can the federal government do to help?

On the witness panel was: Dr Scott Hsu, Lead Fusion Coordinator, Office of the Undersecretary for Science and Innovation, Department of Energy; Professor Steven Cowley, Director, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory; Dr. Tim Luce, Chief Scientist and Head of the Science & Operation Domain at the ITER Organization; Dr. Bob Mumgaard, CEO and Co-Founder, Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

You can watch the archived webcast here.

You can access the testimony of Tim Luce here.

The 32nd annual Symposium on Fusion Technology (SOFT) has opened in the Croatian city Dubrovnik. 

The biennial symposium on fusion technology is the most important conference in the field in Europe, bringing together scientists, engineers, industry representatives and exhibitors from all over the world and focusing on the latest developments in fusion experiments and activities. SOFT includes invited, oral and poster presentations, as well as industry and R&D exhibitions.

SOFT 2022 is organized by the Ruđer Bošković Institute (RBI) from 18-23 September in a hydrid format. ITER's Alain Bécoulet, Head of the Engineering Domain, opened the first plenary session on Monday 19 September with a talk on the status of ITER procurement and assembly. During a satellite event in the afternoon, the SOFT 2022 Industry Day, numerous business opportunities in fusion for European industry were presented by representatives of the ITER Organization, Fusion for Energy (F4E), EUROfusion, and the Consorcio IFMIF-DONES España.

The ITER Organization is present throughout the week with the ITER stand. In this photo, the newly appointed ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi (right) is at the stand with Alain Bécoulet.

See the conference website for more about SOFT 2022.

Sergio Orlandi's mastery of Latin—a language he considers "more perfect than mathematics"—proved precious when, on 15 September, he was awarded an Honorary Professorship from the University of Life Sciences in Lublin, Poland.

In Poland, Latin is the language universities use in such circumstances. The Rector of the University pronounced his speech in Latin, Sergio's laudation was issued in Latin, and it is in Latin that the Head of the ITER Plant Construction Department responded.

What connects Sergio and the University of Life Sciences in Lublin is his experience in the nuclear field and his reflexion on sustainable energy as a member of the European Academy of Science and Arts, and as the Dean of the Academy's Technical and Environmental Science commission. His experience in the construction of Chernobyl's "sarcophagus" following the nuclear plant's 1986 accident, and also in the management of the liquid waste from the devastated reactors was also an important factor in the connexion between the nuclear engineer and the university. Lublin is located 600 kilometres from the site of the accident, and Poland is understandably quite concerned by the fallout that ensued.

In Lublin, switching from Latin to English, Sergio gave a talk titled "Flying into Nuclear Fission and Fusion Technologies in the Short and Medium Term." He will soon be back to Latin and to his favourite bedside book—Ovid's Metamorphoses.