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In​ this three-minute time-lapse video, nine years of Wendelstein 7-X assembly (2005 to 2014) are condensed into three-minutes. The fusion device at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, in Germany, comprises five large and almost identical modules that were pre-installed and then assembled in a circle in the experimentation hall. Pump-down of the machine began in May.

Read more about Wendelstein 7-X on the IPP website.

​See the progress of the JT-60SA project — one of the three projects being developed under the Broader Approach Agreement — in this new clip filmed on-site in Naka, Japan. The clip shows that the six year assembly of JT-60SA is moving forward: the heart of the machine, the vacuum vessel, is now being built.

Implemented by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) and the European Domestic Agency for ITER, F4E, the advanced superconducting JT-60SA (super advanced) tokamak will be used to quickly identify how to optimize plasma performance for ITER and will study advanced modes of plasma operation suitable for DEMO. A first plasma is foreseen for March 2019.

You can watch the video here or read the news released on F4E's Media Corner.  

​The ITER Project was represented at a recent roundtable in Russia that reunited the State Duma (the lower chamber of the Russian Parliament), the Public Chamber, the state corporation Rosatom, the Kurchatov Institute, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Federal Energy Service Company FSUE, and leading specialists from the fields of superconductivity and energy.

Organized on 6 June 2014 to address the current status and development prospects of applied heavy-current superconductivity in Russia, the forum aimed to create a common understanding of the potential and the challenges of the field.

The ITER Project was represented by the director of ITER Russia, Anatoly Krasilnikov, who stressed that participation in the project has catalyzed the development of superconducting technology in Russia. A superconducting strand production line was created from scratch at the Chepetsky Mechanical Plant (Glazov, Udmurt Republic) and - thanks to the cooperation between some of the country's leading industries - Russian superconductor for ITER matches the highest world standards.

The following Russian institutes and industries are collaborating to fulfil Russia's procurement to ITER: the Chepetsky Mechanical Plant (strand manufacturing); the Bochvar Institute (strand verification); JSC VNIIKP (cabling); Institute for High Energy Physics (jacketing); and the Kurchatov Institute (global leak test and the mechanical testing of jacketing material). All deliveries of Russian conductor lengths for ITER's toroidal field and poloidal field magnet systems should be completed in 2015.

- Alex Petrov, ITER Russia

​A 25-minute documentary in English on the ITER Project produced by Technology Update (Russia Today) won the bronze world medal at an international film festival in New York City this spring.

Produced back in October 2013, "Way to New Energy" traces the origins of ITER, fusion and the tokamak, taking the viewer to Moscow, Marseille, and Saint Paul-lez-Durance, France as the story unfolds.

You can watch or download the documentary from the website of New York Festivals - 2014 World's Best TV & Films.

​Vitali Dmitrievich Shafranov passed away on 9 June 2014 in Moscow.

V.D. Shafranov was an outstanding physicist, world-recognized leader in the theory of confinement, equilibrium and stability of toroidal magnetic systems, and one of the principal founders of modern plasma physics and magnetic fusion  research.   During the Second World War he worked with his father on road construction and received his first government award in 1943 at the age of 14. He graduated school with a gold medal in 1946. After graduation from Moscow state university in 1951 he started his scientific career at LIPAN (part of the future Kurchatov Institute) in the department of Academician Mikhail Leontovich. He published his first paper on the stability of soft wire in parallel magnetic field together with M. Leontovich in 1952.   Three of his most important pioneering results are:   1) An equation describing plasma equilibrium in axisymmetric magnetic field (Shafranov-Grad, 1956)     2) An equation for the Shafranov shift of magnetic surfaces with respect to tokamak magnetic axis 3) Shafranov-Kruscal criterium of plasma stability with respect to helical kink modes (1953)   Beginning 1981 he was the member-correspondent of the USSR Academy of Science and in 1997 he became an Academician of the Russian Academy of Science.   Academician V. D. Shafranov is the author of more than 200 scientific publications. For over 20 years he was the head of the Plasma Theory Department at the Kurchatov Institute. He was also chief editor of Plasma Physics Reports and editor of the Review of Plasma Physics for over 25 years.   His colleagues remember his modesty to colleagues and the great attention he paid to their every concern.       Vitali Dmitrievich Shafranov 01.12.1929 — 09.06.2014    

​Fusion energy could change the planet. But what is it and why don't we have it?

Physicists Andrew Zwicker, Arturo Dominguez and Stefan Gerhardt explain how fusion energy could be a gamechanger for the world's energy problems.

You can either play the video to learn about fusion, or play with the simulations to make fusion! 

Click here to watch this eight-minute video produced in partnership with the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

CAMBRIDGE — Senator Elizabeth Warren placed her hand atop a large red button and pressed firmly, restarting a nuclear experiment that MIT believes could help save the planet — but which the Obama administration considered superfluous and tried to kill year after year.

More than 100 scientists, engineers, and technicians — most of whom had, until recently, been under layoff notices — had gathered on campus that cold February day, their eyes glued to the three projection screens hanging from the front of the control room.

Then as superhot plasma inside the fusion reactor next door reached its metal walls, a flash of light appeared on one of the screens. The grand energy experiment had throbbed back to life.

Read more on the Boston Globe website.

​On the way to designing and constructing the ITER Port Plug Test Facility, the ongoing gasket test campaign at the Russian company Cryogenmash marks an important milestone.

Click here to view the video produced by ITER Russia.

The 2nd International Symposium on Science at J-PARC will be held from 12 to 15 July 2014 in Tsukuba (Ibaraki) Japan.

Hosted by the J-PARC Center (High Energy Accelerator Research Organization, KEK, and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, JAEA), the symposium will cover the wide range of science programs at J-PARC including accelerator physics, particle and nuclear physics, and materials and life sciences.

​Early bird registration is open through 16 June on the J-PARC 2014 website.

​ITER is the most complex experiment ever attempted on this planet. Its aim, to demonstrate that nuclear fusion, the power of the Sun, can give us pollution free energy that we can use for millions of years. But at the moment, it's still largely a vast building site in the Haut Provence of southern France ...

Roland Pease has been to Cadarache to see how work is progressing, and to hear of the hopes of the scientists who have dedicated their working lives to the dream.

Listen to the 30-minute documentary from the BBC World Service program Discovery here.