ºÚÁÏÉçapp

The plan to shut down a nuclear fusion experiment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in a year and news that half the project's employees have received layoff notices has prompted objections from the state's two senators.   On Monday, U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and William M. Cowan wrote a letter to Ernest Moniz, the MIT physicist who has just been confirmed as the secretary of the Department of Energy, urging him to restore funding to the experiment.   "We were troubled to learn that last week, as a result of budget uncertainty, MIT issued Reduction in Force notices to 35 scientists, engineers and technicians at the Alcator C-Mod facility," the senators wrote. "We are concerned that failing to provide funding for the facility will threaten American leadership in fusion energy research, harm the American economy in the long term, and hinder innovative efforts to develop clean, safe energy production through fusion."   Read more on the Boston Globe website at:

A new generation of 10 tesla uperconductors could make Tokamak style nuclear fusion reactors work. It could make them affordable, smaller, maintainable and remove the plasma problems. The development time could be greatly reduced from 50 years to 10 to 20 years. A new design would also switch to FLIBE molten salt for lower costs.   The overnight cost of a ?ssion power plant is ~ $4/W ($2/W for China).
? First of kind fusion plants at least $10-20/W
? Which implies that developing fusion reactors at ~GWe scale requires 10-20 G$ "per try" e.g. ºÚÁÏÉçapp
? Chance of fusion development signi?cantly improved if net thermal/electrical power produced at ~5-10 x smaller i.e. ~ 500 MW thermal
Read more here: And also, for a more technical overview, here:

The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has been recognized as the top facility in the state for environmental stewardship by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).   PPPL is first among more than 750 companies, colleges and universities, hospitals and municipalities enrolled in the DEP's Environmental Stewardship program, in which facilities voluntarily monitor themselves to improve their sustainability programs. The program rates facilities in categories including reducing greenhouse gas emissions, green building certification and green purchasing. PPPL has actively improved its performance in each of those areas.   "The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, long a leader in the area of fusion energy research, is also a leader in the area of being a good steward of the environment," DEP Commissioner Bob Martin said. "I commend their efforts at making sound environmental practices that benefit their staff, their community and their state an integral part of the facility's daily operations."   In a ceremony at PPPL on May 20, DEP Assistant Commissioner Wolfgang Skacel said the lab's achievement in meeting the standards is "unique."   Read more on PPPL web site at:

Fusion energy, simply, is the exact opposite of fission energy, which comes from splitting an atom and is widely used to power nuclear plants and weapons. Fusion occurs constantly on our sun, which produces most of its energy via the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium. When nuclei fuse, they create a heavier nucleus and produce a little leftover energy in the process.   Fusion doesn't produce runaway chain reactions the way fission can, so there's no need to worry about meltdowns. Nor do fusion reactions produce the large amounts of dangerous radioactive waste that fission reactions do. That's why it's such a dreamy source of energy.   Read more on Popular Mechanics'web site at:

The makers of "Star Trek: Into Darkness" went boldly where few have gone before when they visited Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility (NIF), the world's largest and most energetic laser system. With the approval of the Department of Energy, this unique facility was utilized for the first time as a film set.   The filming was conducted in 2012 during a normal maintenance cycle for the facility. All additive costs were completely reimbursed by the film company so as to have no impact on NIF's experimental plan.   Just as the "Star Trek" genre envisions a brighter future for humanity through exploration of the universe, the mission of NIF is to explore physical realms that were previously unobtainable in a laboratory setting. With greater than 50 times more energy of previous lasers, NIF enables the nation to address scientific grand challenges in national security, fusion energy and fundamental science. Built as a centerpiece of the National Nuclear Security Administration's Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP), NIF provides data required for maintaining the nuclear deterrent without the need for underground testing.   Scotty (Simon Pegg, in red shirt) and Captain Kirk (Chris Pine, far right) in a scene from Start Trek: Into The Darkness that was shot at the National Ignition Facility, California   Read more here:  

"Can we extract energy from water?" was the question that attracted a rapt crowd to Slovenia's Jozef Stefan Institute, during their recent Open Day. Answering the question was Dr Luka Snoj, fusion physicist at the Institute, who included as part of his lecture live video conferences with ºÚÁÏÉçapp and JET.   During a ten minute cross to ºÚÁÏÉçapp, Rem Haange, Head of the ºÚÁÏÉçapp Project Department, gave an update on progress at the construction site. Unfortunately in the live cross to JET, Dr George Sips, from Operations in the JET Department, managed only a smile before the connection crashed.   Read more on EFDA's web site at:    

A long-running Massachusetts Institute of Technology research experiment that explores nuclear fusion as a possible energy source will shut down within a year, as its already diminished federal funding has been cut. Miklos Porkolab, director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center where the project is housed, said that unless Congress decides to step in, 70 employees will be laid off, including physicists, technicians, engineers, and support staff. The shutdown will leave only two fusion experiments in the United States, one at Princeton University and the other at General Atomics, a company in San Diego. Half of the workers have already received notice, Porkolab said. Most of the 20 doctoral students working on the Alcator C-Mod project will be able to complete their thesis work based on data they've already taken, but about five may need to switch projects. The effect of the shutdown will reverberate beyond MIT, which produces the most PhD scientists in the field of fusion and plasma research in the United States.   Read more at:

... Phil Heitzenroeder, who leads the Mechanical Engineering Division at the US Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL).

The Fusion Technology Award, granted by the Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), recognizes outstanding contributions to research and development in the field of fusion technology.

Heitzenroeder has contributed to the design and construction of many of the world's major magnetic fusion facilities during a storied 40-year career at PPPL.

Read more here:

Tom Slattery, a 15-year-old from the UK, recently enjoyed a visit to the ºÚÁÏÉçapp site with his parents. Upon returning home, he addressed the following letter to ºÚÁÏÉçapp Communication (which he has given us permission to publish). We think you'll be impressed, like we were. Tom, we wish you all the best in your future career as a physicist!

After having visited the CERN laboratory, viewed the control labs and observed, from afar, the entrance to the tunnels, I felt that almost anything compared to that was bound to disappoint. ºÚÁÏÉçapp proved my assumption wrong. From the moment of arrival in the sunny car park, with its view to the distant snow-peaked Alps, I felt distinctly involved in the project at hand.

We drove up to the main site where we were given a once over of the structure of the future facility and also on the workings of nuclear fusion. My first thought was of the sheer size of the project. The area being cleared was enormous! There was machinery at work wherever you looked, earth being flattened, pipes laid, and, in the centre of it all, the construction of the main building itself.

We were driven round the expanse of the site, circling in on the future Tokamak Complex itself. At the moment, it is a huge, walled hole in the ground, punctuated by hundreds of concrete supports, each topped with a rubber plate and each taller than a person. Some of the struts are linear, but a large number of them are in a concentric pattern, marking the circumference of the fusion reactor. Next to the building works, on ground level, stands an industrial crane. When completed, the Tokamak Building will stand a few metres taller than this crane. I have visited the JET and MAST facilities in the Culham Centre for Fusion Research (CCFE), and I realise that ºÚÁÏÉçapp dwarfs both these reactors with ease.

The project itself feels like not just an advancement in science, but also common ground for countries involved all over the world, all with a common objective. It appears that now, in this age based on ever-depleting fuel sources, fusion presents the exciting prospect of a sustainable, almost unlimited energy source.

I also felt a sense of pride at the distance that science has come in recent years. As the investigation into particle physics zooms in on smaller and smaller scales, the machines required to perform the experiments become larger and more complicated. Undaunted by this, however, we have continued on and met those requirements, beginning yet another project to delve deeper into the micro world.

So how does this relate to me? The expected date (if all goes well) for First Plasma production is 2020, by which time I will be leaving university and will be ready to work. It is my ambition to work at this site as a physicist working on the experiment. That way I could feel part of something that will change the world that we live in.

Tom Slattery (age 15)

Creativity¡ªThe Next Generation is a subject dear to the Fusion community's heart, and is also the 2013 theme of International Intellectual Property Day, which fell on 26 April 2013. The creativity of future scientists and engineers is vital to overcoming the challenges of achieving fusion but it can only be built on the knowledge that has been created by the previous generations of researchers. Good management of the vast amounts of intellectual property that has been created through JET's working life is crucial to future success.   "We have a very good system," says Keith Musgrave, head of Culham Publication Services, which designed and built the electronic database of JET's documents. "You can retrieve documents electronically in minutes, as far back as pre-1990. You can read the abstract before the full download, and request high resolution versions of the figures if needed."   Read more on the EFDA web site at:

Getting a complete picture of how plasmas perform in MAST has just become easier¡ªthanks to expertise borrowed from a very different type of fusion machine.   The tokamak is not the only route to fusion power. Scientists around the world are looking at other methods of bringing the stars down to earth, and one of the main alternatives is known as a stellarator.
The stellarator, like the tokamak, uses magnetic fields to control hot plasmas in which fusion reactions can be created to produce energy.   Where it differs is in the way these fields are created. To confine the plasma, it is necessary to put a twist in the magnetic field. The tokamak drives an electric current through the plasma to produce this twist. With the stellarator, the twist is provided by twisted magnetic coils outside of the plasma. Stellarators have been around for longer than tokamaks, dating back to the early 1950s, but the challenges of building such intricate machines have slowed progress. However, the construction of the advanced W 7-X stellarator at Greifswald in Germany  is set to change all that, with assembly due for completion in 2015.   Read more on CCFE website at:

An idyllic hilltop setting in the Cadarache forest of Provence in the south of France has become the site of an ambitious attempt to harness the nuclear power of the sun and stars.   It is the place where 34 nations representing more than half the world's population have joined forces in the biggest scientific collaboration on the planet¡ªonly the International Space Station is bigger.   The international nuclear fusion project¡ªknown as Iter, meaning "the way" in Latin¡ªis designed to demonstrate a new kind of nuclear reactor capable of producing unlimited supplies of cheap, clean, safe and sustainable electricity from atomic fusion.   Read more on The Independant website:  

Ten years ago a historic treaty was signed that would bring large changes to Europe's fusion program. The Treaty of Accession, signed on 16 April 2003, led to ten new countries joining the European Union (and at the same time the European Fusion Development Agreement EFDA, via the EURATOM treaty).   The addition of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia constituted the largest single addition of territory and population to the European Union. The addition of so many former Eastern Bloc countries, along with Bulgaria and Romania who joined four years later, had a major impact on EFDA in the ten years that followed.   Read more on the EFDA website:

Physicists usually rely on electromagnetic fields to harness the power of plasma, the fourth state of matter, in fusion power experiments. But University of Missouri researchers have managed to create rings of plasma that can hold their shape without the use of outside electromagnetic fields¡ªpossibly paving the way for a new age of practical fusion power and leading to the creation of new energy storage devices.

Traditional efforts to achieve nuclear fusion have relied upon multi-billion-dollar fusion reactors, called tokamaks, which harness powerful electromagnetic fields to contain the super-heated plasmas resulting from the fusion reactions. The ability to create plasma with self-confining electromagnetic fields in the open air could eliminate the need for external electromagnetic fields in future fusion experiments, and with it, much of the expense.

The researchers created plasma rings about 15 centimeters in diameter that flew through the air across distances up to 60 centimeters. The rings lasted just 10 milliseconds, but reached temperatures greater than the sun's fiery fusion core at around 6600 to 7700 degrees K (6327 to 7427 degrees C). Plasma physicists suspect that magnetic fields are still involved¡ªbut that the plasma rings create their own.

Read more at:

Clutching 2.5 metre-long spanners, three teams of dignitaries from Europe and Japan simultaneously tighten bolts on the cryostat base of JT60 Super-Advanced, thereby marking a significant milestone¡ªthis major component for the Japanese tokamak was designed and manufactured in Spain.   The base is a 250-ton structure made of low-cobalt stainless steel that will support the complete tokamak. Together with an upper section the base will form a vacuum enclosure around the vacuum vessel and coils, allowing them to be cooled to low temperatures required by JT60-SA's superconducting coils.   Read more at:

America's economy and security depend upon reliable sources of power. Over the next few decades, almost all of the power plants in the US will need to be replaced, and America's dependence on fossil fuels presents serious national security concerns. They sap our economy, exacerbate climate change, and constrict our foreign policy. Our newfound boom in natural gas and oil production will ease but not eliminate these underlying issues.   Read more at:    

How will the ºÚÁÏÉçapp construction site evolve in 2013?    European Domestic Agency (F4E) video clips reporting on the evolution of the ºÚÁÏÉçapp construction site and the manufacturing of components are back! We have reworked their style and integrated interviews from different members of staff and contractors in order to give you more insight on the state of play.   More on F4E website at:

Human travel to Mars has long been the unachievable dangling carrot for space programs. Now, astronauts could be a step closer to our nearest planetary neighbor through a unique manipulation of nuclear fusion, the same energy that powers the sun and stars.   University of Washington researchers and scientists at a Redmond-based space-propulsion company are building components of a fusion-powered rocket aimed to clear many of the hurdles that block deep space travel, including long times in transit, exorbitant costs and health risks.  

There's a new exhibit in EFDA's Fusion Expo, the Remote Handling Experience. Host Dr Phil Dooley gets one of the remote handling professionals from JET, Tim Powell, to try it out. After showing how the demo should be done, Tim takes us to see the real remote handling control room at JET.  

On 5-6 April, some 120 students from 12 neighbouring ³¦´Ç±ô±ô¨¨²µ±ð²õ (junior high schools) attended workshops on nuclear energy, safety and life sciences at CEA-Cadarache. The national operation known as CEA Jeunes ("CEA-Youth Day"), was established in 1994 to provide junior high students with a two-day experience of daily life at a major nuclear research centre.