±¬×ߺÚÁÏ

The fastest supercomputer in the world, Summit (launched earlier this year at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US) will be instrumental in advancing fusion studies. Choong-Seock Chang, head of the Center for Edge Physics Simulation (EPSI) at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (US), studies the complex physics at the edge of fusion plasmas by running simulations on Summit. "It enables us to do physics which we have not been able to do before," he says.

According to Chang, scientists discovered that putting more heat into the edge of a plasma eliminated impurities and calmed the plasma. The supercomputer, featuring 2700 NVIDIA Volta GPUs, runs simulations to help get an understanding at the fundamental level of how these processes function. With the help of artificial intelligence, Summit will sift through the huge amount of simulation data and select the data with "the new physics."

The ultimate goal, says Chang, is to model the entire device and "build a virtual tokamak so that we can predict and design the next fusion reactor."

See the video published by NVIDIA .

For the ninth time, the International Standing Committee for the International Symposium on Fusion Nuclear Technology (ISFNT) has published a call for nomination for the Miya-Abdou Award. The prize honours outstanding contributions to the field of fusion nuclear technology by young nuclear scientists or engineers. Winners receive the award at the biennial gathering of the ISFNT.

The award is named after fusion experts Kenzo Miya who used to work at the University of Tokyo and Mohamed Abdou from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in recognition of their contribution to the field of fusion nuclear technology.

The ninth Miya-Abdou Award will be presented at the 14th ISFNT meeting from 22-27 September 2019 in Budapest, Hungary. The deadline for nominations is 15 May 2019.

For more information please consult ISFNT's .

The Divertor Tokamak Test facility (DTT) is a new Italian fusion project that aims to address one of the major challenges identified in the European Fusion Roadmap: i.e., exhausting power from fusion reactors. The project is led by the Italian national Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Development (ENEA) in collaboration with all the Italian fusion community and international institutions.

"DTT will mark a significant step forward for fusion development in Europe and worldwide," stresses DTT project leader Aldo Pizzuto, "and it will help to strengthen the industry involvement in fusion technology and engineering."

The DTT facility will be located in the ENEA premises in Frascati and the first industrial procurements for its components will be launched in early 2019. A DTT Industry Day will be held on 14 December 2018 in Frascati, which will be dedicated to the presentation of the procurement strategy and schedule. Business-to-business (B2B) meetings and bilateral thematic tables will also be organized.

To register for the DTT Industry Day .

For more information on the Divertor Tokamak Test facility, see .

Another Highly Exceptional Load (HEL) passes through the six-kilometre-long channel (the Canal de Caronte) that leads from the Mediterranean into the inland sea Étang de Berre through the town of Martigues.

The load consists of four transformers—one poloidal field coil rectifier procured by China and three central solenoid converters (89 tonnes each) procured by Korea. All four are "step down transformers" that lower the 66 kV tension to a few kilovolts before the AC current is transformed into DC to be fed to the magnets. The HEL convoy will begin its land journey on Wednesday and is expected at ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ in the wee hours of Friday. Three more poloidal field coil rectifiers, stored in DAHER facility in Berre, will hit the road on Wednesday 28 November to be delivered at ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ the following Friday.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences has reported that the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) at the Institute of Plasma Physics in Hefei has achieved an electron temperature of over 100 million degrees in its core plasma during a four-month experiment carried out earlier this year in collaboration with domestic and international colleagues.

Power injection exceeded 10 MW, and plasma stored energy reached 300 kJ after scientists optimized the coupling of different heating techniques (lower hybrid wave heating, electron cyclotron wave heating, ion cyclotron resonance heating and neutral beam ion heating). The experiment utilized advanced plasma control and theory/simulation prediction.

Research at EAST on physics and technology issues under steady-state operational conditions is directly relevant to ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ. Recent experiments on plasma equilibrium and instability, confinement and transport, plasma-wall interaction, and energetic particle physics have demonstrated long-time scale, steady-state H-mode operation with good control of impurity, core/edge MHD stability, and heat exhaust using an ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ-like tungsten divertor. 

Read a detailed report .

The UK government has pledged to provide an additional £20m in 2019-20 to the UK Atomic Energy Agency (UKAEA), the public body responsible for research into nuclear fusion and the management of the country's largest fusion research laboratory, the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE).

"We think fusion has a big role to play," said UKAEA CEO Professor Ian Chapman. "The fuels are abundant around the globe, it doesn't release greenhouse gases and it doesn't produce long-lived radioactive waste like the nuclear fission power we have today."

The 2018 Budget reaffirms the government's commitment to nuclear energy following an absence of new investments into the sector in the 2017 Budget.

According to the World Nuclear Association, nuclear power accounted for 21% of UK electricity in September this year, however "almost half" of the country's 15 reactors are expected to be decommissioned by 2025.

Read the full article  in "Power Technology" .

Photo: The Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE).

Thirty-seven seconds might seem like a very short duration—but not for a plasma, and even less for a plasma produced by a machine that is just commencing operations.

The 37-second plasma that WEST obtained on 31 October exceeds by 7 seconds the first of five milestones ("Key Project Indicators") that were assigned to the machine on its way to final commissioning.

The good news did not come alone—the final ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ-like, actively-cooled full tungsten divertor has just been ordered. It will replace the present non-actively cooled divertor made of tungsten-covered graphite blocks and only a few actively cooled test plasma-facing units.

When this new divertor is installed, WEST will be able to produce ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ-relevant plasmas of up to 1,000 seconds.

In the third week of November, the ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ will be installing the first component of the machine in the basement of the Tokamak Building.

The 10-metre, 6-tonne metal component is one segment of the magnet feeder that will relay electrical power, cryogenic fluids and instrumentation cables from outside of the machine in to poloidal field coil #4. The specific section to be installed, called a "feedthrough," will cross through the bioshield and cryostat at the lowest (B2) level of the building.

Delivered by the Chinese Domestic Agency to ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ last year, the component has undergone testing at the MIFI workshop (Magnet Infrastructure Facilities for ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ), which is operated jointly by a team from ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA).

Most recently, the lifting operation was tested at MIFI using a specially designed tool delivered by the Korean Domestic Agency (picture). Next week the component will be transferred by truck to a staging area, and then lifted up into the circular assembly area and lowered to the floor.

Stay tuned for a report in the 26 November issue of the ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ Newsline on the first act of the machine installation phase.

At the Troitsk Institute for Innovative and Fusion Research (Moscow region), specialists have established a unique remote control panel that enables participation on leading fusion devices around the world.

Based on the facility's lab complex for neutron and spectroscopy diagnostics, the panel will facilitate the creation and calibration of diagnostic systems for ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ under Russian procurement scope.

The first cooperation line has been established with Europe's JET tokamak, based in Culham, UK.  

Rich Hawryluk—who was Deputy Director-General for the Administration Department at the ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ from 2011 to 2013—has been appointed interim deputy director for operations of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) while an international search for a permanent operations director moves forward. 

Hawryluk will assume the position of Terry Brog, who is stepping down from his position. Brog will remain at the Laboratory for the next six months as the head of special assignments and will work on special projects for the Department of Energy and will help develop a technology transfer plan for the Laboratory. 

This is a familiar role for Hawryluk. He served as deputy director for 11 years from 1997 to 2008. Hawryluk came to PPPL in 1974 after receiving his Ph.D. in physics from MIT. During his 44-year career, he has worked on most of the major fusion experiments at PPPL. He was head of the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor, then the largest magnetic confinement facility in the United States, from 1991 to 1997. After leaving his position as deputy director, he headed PPPL's ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ and Tokamaks Department from 2009 to 2011. From 2011 to 2013, he worked at ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ in France, serving as the deputy director-general for the Administration Department of ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ.  After returning to the Laboratory in 2013, Hawryluk headed the ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ and Tokamaks Department for three years. In 2016, he became head of the NSTX-U Recovery Project and headed that effort until becoming interim Laboratory director in September 2017. 

Read more .

The 2019 edition of the ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ Business Forum will be held in the French city of Antibes from 26 to 28 March.

Organized by Agence Iter France with the participation of the ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ, the European Domestic Agency Fusion for Energy, and other Domestic Agencies, the event has three aims:

• To offer firms the opportunity to learn more about ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ business opportunities;
• To facilitate partnerships between industries within Europe and outside Europe, and;
• To foster collaboration between industry and fusion laboratories.

The 2017 event drew over 1,000 participants from 433 companies and 25 countries. Ninety-six percent confirmed that the event had allowed them "to identify potential clients, partners or subcontractors."

The website is open at . Registration and stand booking will be possible from mid-November on.

Five years of construction work to upgrade the spherical tokamak MAST (UK) have been brought to a close and experiments are set to begin early next year.

MAST Upgrade will contribute to the knowledge base for ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ by helping to resolve key plasma physics issues. It will be the first tokamak to trial the Super-X divertor—a novel way to exhaust heat loads from large fusion reactors, which spreads the power loads in the divertor area of the machine. Other features of the upgrade include an increase in the pulse length by a factor approaching ten, additional heating power, and better control and pumping capabilities to contain the resulting higher temperature, longer-pulse plasmas.

A ceremony was held on 18 October at the UK's Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE). See the full report .

Follow Sky News presenter Thomas Moore as he explores the promise, the science, and the construction of the "world's largest science experiement."

Watch the three-minute video .

Can ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ be the answer to the world's energy needs? A team from Al Jazeera Paris came on site in October to find out. After descending into the depths of the Tokamak Complex, interviewing the ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ Director-General and site specialists, and observing daily activities at ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ Headquarters over two days, team prepared a report that concludes with:

"Critics say there's a risk that ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ won't work or will never lead to fusion energy being commercially viable ... But if it does work it could help save the planet from climate change and prove the power of the human imagination. For those here, it's a gamble worth taking." 

Watch it .

Want to see what the ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ platform will look like when all the buildings are complete? Check (and play with) this developped by the European Domestic Agency F4E. (Works best on Chrome)

As part of an investment made by the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) to launch a fusion technology platform at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE), the "Fusion Technology Facilities" () centre of excellence will house a suite of equipment designed to test fusion components under combined thermal, mechanical, hydraulic and magnetic loads representative of future fusion power stations.

In the build-up period, the team is establishing links to promote knowledge sharing and to support an ambitious industry-related research program. CCFE has just announced that a strong collaboration is planned between the Materials Technology Laboratory at FTM and the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Bristol (UK). The establishment of complementary test equipment at Bristol and the funding of a joint post-doctoral research position are part of the agreement.

Read more at and the .

In the latest edition of Fusion in Europe, young volunteer writers imagine what a future with fusion might look at.

Download the magazine . 

On 21 September, Carlos Alejaldre, who was an ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ Deputy-Director-General from 2006 to 2015, was appointed Director-General of CIEMAT (Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas), the Spanish public research agency focused on energy and the environment.

A plasma physicist by training, Carlos has held several important positions in fusion research. Prior to joining ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ, he headed CIEMAT's national fusion laboratory (1992-2004)and was for two years (2004-2006) the director general of technological policy at the Spanish ministry of Education and Science.

More on the CIEMAT (in Spanish).

New cameras are capturing  of fusion energy experiments at the Joint European Torus at Culham. The cameras are actually outside the machine hall and relay video back from the heart of the 100-million-degree plasma via a set of mirrors. The footage will be used by scientists in forthcoming experiments to monitor JET's operation and to carry out studies on the plasma's behaviour and properties. The video shows the comparative view from two identical cameras: one located outside the bioshield wall (left) and one inside the Torus Hall (right).

±¬×ߺÚÁÏ proves that we can collaborate for the common good, film maker Mila Aung-Thwin says in an interview with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Ahead of its 62nd General Conference which will take place from 17-21 September 2018 in Vienna, Austria, the IAEA Aung-Thwin about his award-winning documentary Let There Be Light. The feature-length film tells the story of dedicated scientists and their pursuit of nuclear fusion as a future source of clean, safe and abundant energy.

Aung-Thwin explains how his fascination with the human side of science and his interest in energy issues let him to explore the field of fusion and the many fusion projects worldwide. "The film is meant to illuminate some of the approaches to fusion, some of the challenges, as told by unique individuals," he says.

Along with ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ Director-General Bernard Bigot and Scientific Director of IPP Sibylle Günter, film director Aung-Thwin will be in Vienna next week and will speak at the General Conference's session on "Fusion Energy for Peace and Sustainable Development" on 18 September.

The session will be followed by a showing of the fusion documentary Let There Be Light .

The documentary is available worldwide on Vimeo for purchase and rent both in and . In North America it is also available on and .