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​Researchers of the FOM Institute  have discovered that the wall material of a fusion reactor can shield itself from high energy plasma bursts. The wall material tungsten seems to expel a cloud of cooling hydrogen particles that serves as a protective layer. The research team publishes their results on 24 March 2014 in the journal Applied Physics Letters.

[...] The heart of a fusion reactor like ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ contains an extremely hot plasma, from which short, intense energy bursts rain down on the reactor wall. In ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ, the tungsten wall will face powerful discharges of several gigawatts per square meter, several times per second.  However, researchers at FOM Institute DIFFER discovered that under some conditions less than half of that incoming energy actually hits the surface.

The physicists used their linear plasma experiment  to show that the tungsten surface shields itself from the blast by expelling a cloud of cooling hydrogen particles. This is the first time that fusion researchers see the energy pulses and the wall react to each other at this level of detail.

Caption: Hydrogen plasma in DIFFER's linear plasma generator Pilot-PSI. Credit: Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM)

Read more on the .

 

 

​With a combined morning and evening circulation of more than 14 million, the Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun is number one among the world's biggest selling newspapers.

Last Friday 21 March the Yomiuri dispatched one of its science reporters, Kyoichi Sasazawa, to the ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ site. The reporter met with ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ Director-General Osamu Motojima and ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ DDG Carlos Alejaldre and visited the ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ construction site. "In Japan, knowledge of fusion needs to be improved," he observed.

The article he's preparing will be published in Japan in late April and will also appear in the of the Yomiuri.

Caption: DG Motojima and Yomiuri science writer Kyoichi Sasazawa take in the Tokamak Pit view from the Assembly Hall slab.

 

​Twenty five years ago, University of Utah scientists announced a discovery that touched off a worldwide sensation.

"Basically, we've established a sustained nuclear fusion reaction by means which are considerably simpler than conventional techniques," said Professor Stanley Pons on 23 March 1989. He was describing an experiment on the Utah campus that sent waves of optimism around the globe.   Some thought so-called "cold fusion" would solve the world's energy problems and lead to widespread peace and prosperity. But it wasn't long before those hopes crumbled. At least one prominent scientist later denounced it as "the scientific fiasco of the century."

Read more . 

Lawrence Livermore scientists have modeled actinide-based alloys, such as spent nuclear fuel, in an effort to predict the impact of evolving fuel chemistry on material performance.

This work, funded by a Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program on "Scientific Basis for Ultra-high Burn-up Nuclear Fuels," could have direct implications for the use of as another source of energy.

Despite the limited availability of experimental thermodynamic data, this new approach can predict important features contained in phase diagrams, namely phases and their stability in composition-temperature domains and microstructures, and more importantly, guide and motivate further experiments for validating the methodology and the data for subsequent modeling of materials performance at higher scale, according to Patrice Turchi, lead author of a review paper appearing in the March issue of the Journal of the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (JOM).

Read the full article .

​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 .

​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—±¬×ߺÚÁÏ staff from India, friends and families—gathered to celebrate this most colourful holiday.

 

 

 

​During a recent visit to China, ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ 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 ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ Council, received the Director-General and colleagues Ju Jin, ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ Deputy Director-General, Sachiko Ishizaka, Secretary to the ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ Council, and members of the Project Control Division for an exchange of views on recent developments in the ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ Project. The following day, the ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ Director-General visited the headquarters of China National Nuclear Corporation in Beijing, meeting with Chief Engineer Zengguang Lei and ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ 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 ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ superconducting strand, and Nantong Shenhai Science and Industrial Technology, responsible for the surface-plating of ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ 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 ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ Diagnostic Division and Neill Taylor, former Division head of Nuclear Safety and Analysis, reflect on their experiences at ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ.  

Read it  (p.12-13).

 

 

​One of the people responsible for the manufacture of the magnet system at the heart of ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ presented a special guest seminar recently to staff and students at the Australian Institute for Innovative Materials.

Arnaud Devred, Superconductor Systems and Auxiliaries Section leader at ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ, is responsible for the in-kind procurement of the superconducting cable-in-conduit conductors which are expected to cost around $US1 billion, about half of the whole cost of the ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ magnet system.

Read the original article

​Without the moon, we probably wouldn't exist.  In that sense, the moon's value is infinite -- but what if you wanted to put a dollar amount on that rock? Most scientists think the rock is made up of elements like iron and magnesium, but the most valuable part of its structure may be Helium-3. Hard to find on Earth, the isotope can power nuclear fusion reactors, a potentially mammoth .

 

Read the full article .

 

 

 

Dhiraj Bora, present Director of the Institute for Plasma Research, Gujarat and former ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ Deputy-Director General, explains what a fusion reaction is, what conditions it requires, and what hurdles scientists face in achieving it.

Read ​Prof. Dhiraj Bora's interview .

 

​When a science-mad artificial intelligence system (voiced by GLaDOS actress Ellen McLain) is installed at NASA, two hapless computer technicians learn the process behind nuclear fusion in the Sun, and how it differs from fission.

Watch the video .

​New research has provided a comprehensive overview of new small-scale nuclear reactors, which could be suitable candidates to cope with the world's ever-growing demand for energy. According to official estimates, world energy consumption in 2035 will be more than double that of 1995. A substantial challenge for engineers and scientists over the coming decades is to develop and deploy power plants with sufficient capacity and flexibility to meet this increasing need while simultaneously reducing emissions. The new article aims to show to what extent a new type of nuclear reactor, termed the 'Small Modular Reactor' (SMR), might provide a solution to fulfil these energy needs.

  Read full article on website.

 

​

While the popularity of nuclear power worldwide took a major hit in the aftermath of the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Disaster in 2011, it remains one of the cheapest, most efficient, and carbon-friendly forms of energy generation that we currently have.   Energy superpowers like the United States, Russia, and Canada have made nuclear power lucrative, not just through cheap energy, but through licensing their technology to developing countries looking for a new energy source. For that reason, nuclear power has remained a viable and important form of energy, one which will be integral to the world over the next fifty years.   We took a look at to determine which countries are the biggest nuclear energy powers. We rated each country based on the total amount of electricity produced by nuclear power.   Read the full article on website.

 

​President Barack Obama this morning released including proposals for a host of federal research agencies.

(...)

Once again there are winners and losers in the proposed budget for 2015 the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Science, the single largest funder of the physical sciences in the United States. Overall, the Office of Science budget would creep up by just 0.9% from its current level to $5.111 billion. But whereas some research programs, such as advance computing, would see double-digit increases, others, such as fusion, would take deep cuts. (...)

In contrast, the fusion program would take a 17.6% cut to $416 million—$88 million less than it's getting this year. Although far from final, the numbers suggest another big dip for a program that has enjoyed a roller coaster ride in recent years. In its proposed 2013 budget, research to help pay for the increasing U.S. contribution to the international fusion experiment, ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ, in Cadarache, France. That budget also called for closing one of three smaller fusion experiments, or tokamaks, in the United States, the Alcator C-Mod at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. But that budget never passed and last December, when Congress finally agreed to a budget for this year, it of nearly $200 million. The new budget request would give some of that increase back and suggests DOE officials see bigger priorities elsewhere.

Read full article on website.

​Will particle physicists ever have a new toy that will take them to energies beyond those accessible through the Large Hadron Collider? History suggests it's unlikely. To save costs, the LHC was built in an existing tunnel that had hosted an earlier, less powerful accelerator. The US cancelled the construction of hardware that would have outperformed the LHC (the Superconducting Super Collider, or SSC) due to cost overruns, and it shut down its Tevatron once the LHC started up. Now, decisions on the linear collider that will be used to study the Higgs in detail are being made based on which country is likely to come up with the most money.

But physicists are apparently an optimistic bunch. Earlier this year, CERN announced that it was beginning to evaluate an LHC replacement that would require a tunnel so large—100km in circumference—that it would have to pass under Lake Geneva itself. Potentially in response, a team of US-based physicists have come up with an even more audacious plan: don't build the linear collider, resurrect the SSC's now abandoned tunnels, and use them to both host a Higgs factory and as a booster for a truly massive, 270km collider.

 

Read the full article on website.

 

In Cadarache, France, the CEA-Euratom tokamak Tore Supra is undergoing a major transformation to be used as a test bench for ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ. This is the WEST project (W - for tungsten - Environment in Steady-state Tokamak).

The of the WEST newsletter is now available online.

​Registration is open now for the Superconductivity for Energy 2014 conference that will be held in Paestum, Italy on 15-19 May 2014.

Conference topics include high power superconductor applications (materials, cables, magnets); frontiers in high field magnet technology; superconductors for energy; power devices; high current superconductivity; and superconducting properties and functionalities for new applications.

The event is organized in the framework of the PON Project "NAFASSY" (NAtional FAcility for Superconducting SYstems) by the Physics Department of the University of Salerno in collaboration with the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA), the National Research Council (CNR), and the Center for New Technologies (CRdC).

All information can be found on the conference .

The February 2014 issue of the US ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ News Update is now available online. The newsletter highlights the recent progress in the ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ systems under US responsibility (pellet injection system,tokamak cooling water system, central solenoid magnet, etc.) and relates the very solid budget situation for fiscal year 2014.

You can read the latest news from US ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ .

​On a warm sunny afternoon last week, ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ welcomed its very own telecommunication pylon which proudly stands 35 metres high beside the Visitors Centre. It's been equipped with 2G and 3G technologies with scope for 4G technology in the near future. SFR antennas at the top of this pylon cover the whole ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ site. Negotiations to bring in another carrier will take place at the end of this year and if everything falls into place, Orange soon will be seen sharing this telecommunication pylon along with SFR.