ºÚÁÏÉçapp

What should have been a standard two-hour visit turned out to be a four-hour crash course in fusion. For the first time in the history of the ºÚÁÏÉçapp Project, a 29-person delegation from the African continent came to visit ºÚÁÏÉçapp this week. Taking part in a conference in Marseille on public-private partnerships in the energy sector, the lawyers, engineers and ministry representatives from Cameroun, Burkina Faso, Congo, Togo, Senegal, Kenya, the Ivory Coast, Maurice, Mali and Uganda seized the opportunity to spend an afternoon at ºÚÁÏÉçapp Headquarters, with a visit to the site and presentations on fusion science and technology and the organization of the world's largest International scientific collaboration. "What you are doing here is really amazing," Tarek Toko, from the West African Development Bank, said on the way back to the bus. "You must succeed!"

The organization charged with overseeing and coordinating the European Union's quest for fusion power, , plans to update during 2016 the European Union's 2012 strategic plan to put fusion electricity on the grid by 2050, according to Xavier Litaudon speaking at the annual meeting of the Fusion Power Associates on 16-17 December in Washington, DC.

ºÚÁÏÉçapp remains "the key facility of the roadmap" but the update will incorporate the impact of slippage in the ºÚÁÏÉçapp construction schedule. A new ºÚÁÏÉçapp schedule is expected to be approved by the ºÚÁÏÉçapp Council by mid-2016 according to ºÚÁÏÉçapp Director-General Bernard Bigot, who also spoke at the meeting.

The European Union's strategic plan reflects a collaboration with Japan on the "Broader Approach" to fusion that was a part of the ºÚÁÏÉçapp siting decision process. According to EUROfusion, in the course of the roadmap implementation the fusion program will move "from being laboratory-based and science-driven towards an industry- and technology-driven venture."

To ensure minimal delay to DEMO, the next step after ºÚÁÏÉçapp, the European Union has initiated a conceptual design system engineering approach that will address such issues as safety, tritium breeding, power exhaust, remote handling, component lifetime and plant availability, according to Litaudon. Experience gained from continued operation and "internationalization" of the JET tokamak and from devices JT-60SA (Japan), WEST (France) and Wendelstein 7-X (Germany) are also important elements of the plan.

Ed Synakowski, head of the US fusion program, told the audience that the US had recently completed the US fusion Strategic Plan requested by Congress in 2014. Permission from Congress was needed before the Plan could be released to the public, he said.

All talks from the Fusion Power Associates annual meeting, Strategies to Fusion Power, are posted at the .

Source:

Among the most feared events in space physics are solar eruptions, massive explosions that hurl millions of tons of plasma gas and radiation into space. These outbursts can be deadly: if the first moon-landing mission had encountered one, the intense radiation could have been fatal to the astronauts. And when eruptions reach the magnetic field that surrounds the Earth, the contact can create geomagnetic storms that disrupt cell phone service, damage satellites and knock out power grids.

NASA is eager to know when an eruption is coming and when what looks like the start of an outburst is just a false alarm. Knowing the difference could affect the timing of future space missions such as journeys to Mars, and show when steps to protect satellites, power systems and other equipment need to be taken.

(Photo NASA)

Read the whole article on the  website.

Momentum is building on the MAST Upgrade project at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) in the UK.

When completed, the upgrade of the Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST) will enable scientists to test the spherical tokamak design as a candidate for a Component Test Facility that will trial technology and materials in advance of the next-step machine; add to the knowledge base for ºÚÁÏÉçapp on key plasma physics issues; and test a high-power exhaust system known as a Super-X divertor.

The final phase of assembly will take place in 2016.

See the three-minute video on the CCFE .

Scientists at the US Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have produced self-consistent computer simulations that capture the evolution of an electric current inside fusion plasma without using a central electromagnet, or solenoid.

The simulations of the process, known as non-inductive current ramp-up, were performed using TRANSP, the gold-standard code developed at PPPL. The results were published in October 2015 in Nuclear Fusion. The research was supported by the DOE Office of Science.

In traditional donut-shaped tokamaks, a large solenoid runs down the centre of the reactor. By varying the electrical current in the solenoid scientists induce a current in the plasma. This current starts up the plasma and creates a second magnetic field that completes the forces that hold the hot, charged gas together.

But spherical tokamaks, a compact variety of fusion reactor that produces high plasma pressure with relatively low magnetic fields, have little room for solenoids. Spherical tokamaks look like cored apples and have a smaller central hole for the solenoid than conventional tokamaks do. Physicists, therefore, have been trying to find alternative methods for producing the current that starts the plasma and completes the magnetic field in spherical tokamaks. 

One such method is known as coaxial helicity injection (CHI). During CHI, researchers switch on an electric coil that runs beneath the tokamak. Above this coil is a gap that opens into the tokamak's vacuum vessel and circles the tokamak's floor. The switched-on electrical current produces a magnetic field that connects metal plates on either side of the gap.

Read more on the PPPL .

The 2015 roundup of news from the US ºÚÁÏÉçapp Project Office is now available online.

US ºÚÁÏÉçapp achieved a number of project "firsts" for delivery and fabrication over the last year. Deliveries to the ºÚÁÏÉçapp site included the first nuclear grade hardware (drain tanks) and the first highly exceptional load shipment to ºÚÁÏÉçapp (a 90-ton electrical transformer). The US also supplied the first plant components installed at the ºÚÁÏÉçapp site (a total of four transformers). On the fabrication side, US ºÚÁÏÉçapp shipped its first production toroidal field conductor to the coil manufacturer in Europe and has begun fabrication of the first central solenoid module.

Read all the news .

Fusion in Europe is a regular magazine on the progress of fusion research published by the consortium. In the December 2015 issue, the magazine takes a look at ongoing preparations for the deuterium-tritium campaign at JET, at the research planned on the upgraded spherical tokamaks MAST (UK) and NSTX (US), and at topical program news from fusion laboratories all over Europe.

Read the latest Fusion in Europe .

For the close of the year, EUROfusion—the European Consortium for the Development of Fusion Energy—is highlighting 24 cutting-edge technologies that have either benefited from, or are the by-products of, fusion research.

Superconducting magnets, low-activation heat-resistant materials, high-tech filters, sophisticated computer codes ... work being carried out around the world on fusion science and technology is pushing known technologies to new levels or breaking new ground for the benefit of many other sectors and, ultimately, society at large.

Follow the Spinoff Advent Calendar on EUROfusion's .

Members of MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) community are cheering the start of a long-anticipated physics experiment at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald, Germany. Two teams of PSFC researchers are collaborating on the Wendelstein 7-X device, the world's largest fusion experiment designed in the stellarator line of magnetic confinement fusion devices.

The PSFC has significant experience with a different configuration of magnetic confinement, having spent decades designing and running the Alcator series of high-magnetic-field tokamak experiments — the Alcator C-Mod device, located on campus, is the latest in that series. There are many similarities between the two designs, however. 

Both the tokamak and the stellarator seek to harness the energy released from the fusion of hydrogen isotopes to provide clean and safe electrical power. Both use helical (spiraling) magnetic fields to contain the hot plasma fuel in a donut-shaped chamber. In a tokamak, this field is generated both by external electromagnets and a large electrical current that is driven in the plasma itself. Driving and sustaining this plasma current, and its impact on stability and transport of energy and particles, is a major focus of the research at MIT.

The stellarator concept takes a different approach. First invented by the noted astrophysicist and fusion pioneer Lyman Spitzer of Princeton University in 1950, the stellarator provides the entire helical field through external electromagnets formed in highly complex and twisted shapes. 

Future experiments at W7-X will address the role that plasma turbulence plays in limiting overall performance, and PSFC researchers are working with the W7-X group to investigate this. One PSFC team — principal research scientist Jim Terry and postdoctoral researcher Seung-Gyou Baek — will develop a fast camera system for viewing light emitted from the plasma, and will make important measurements of turbulence near the edge of the plasma. The other team — physics professor Miklos Porkolab and staff scientist Eric Edlund — will develop a specialized interferometer for imaging density fluctuations deep in the hot plasma core. The issues surrounding turbulence are important in stellarators, as they are in tokamaks, since turbulence moves heat and particles across the confining magnetic field faster than would otherwise occur. Both teams expect to have first measurements during the 2017 experimental campaign.

Read the original article on PSFC's website .

The Russian Domestic Agency for ºÚÁÏÉçapp reports that two shipments recently left factories in Saint Petersburg and Podolsk for the ºÚÁÏÉçapp Project.

The first shipment contains correction coil busbars—the components that connect magnet coils to their power sources—as well as flexible links for busbar interconnections. These components were transported by truck (pictured) from the Efremov Institute (NIIEFA) in Saint Petersburg directly to the ºÚÁÏÉçapp site. The fabrication and supply of switching equipment, busbars and energy-absorbing resistors for the power supply and the protection of the ºÚÁÏÉçapp superconducting magnetic system add up to the most expensive, and one of the most complicated, systems falling within the scope of in-kind procurement from Russia (25 systems in all). In accordance with the busbar Procurement Arrangement, NIIEFA will manufacture and ship approximately 5.4 km of busbars with a total weight exceeding 500 tons.

In the second shipment, four lengths of poloidal field superconductor (two unit lengths of 720 metres and two of 414 metres) were loaded onto trucks at the Cable Institute (JSC VNIIKP) in Podolsk for delivery to the European jacketing line at Criotec (Chivasso, Italy). The conductors are destined for the ºÚÁÏÉçapp poloidal field coil magnet system.

-- Alexander Petrov, ºÚÁÏÉçapp Russia

On 4 December the Programme Manager of EUROfusion, Tony Donné, visited ºÚÁÏÉçapp and spoke to staff in the ºÚÁÏÉçapp auditorium.

EUROfusion is a consortium of 29 research organisations and universities from 26 European countries plus Switzerland that is collaborating to achieve Europe's Fusion Roadmap, which outlines the most efficient way to realize fusion electricity by 2050. ºÚÁÏÉçapp is the key facility on the road to fusion energy, and Professor Donné stressed in his talk that everything possible must be done to support ºÚÁÏÉçapp construction, optimize ºÚÁÏÉçapp operation and ensure minimal delay to the next-phase device, DEMO.

Professor Donné also advocated the extension of the European tokamak JET under an international regime in support of ºÚÁÏÉçapp. The prolonged use of JET as a risk-mitigation device for ºÚÁÏÉçapp and for the training of a generation of scientists, engineers and technicians for ºÚÁÏÉçapp could give the world fusion community access to deuterium-tritium plasmas approximately 10 years before ºÚÁÏÉçapp.

Read more about , Europe's , and .

The aim of the WEST project is to turn the Tore Supra tokamak (France) into a test bed for ºÚÁÏÉçapp, with an actively cooled ºÚÁÏÉçapp-like tungstendivertor.

Component installation is underway. The latest WEST Newsletter (#11) reports on the most recent milestone: the installation of the divertor coil casings. Two stainless steel rings constituting the housing for the conductor windings are now assembled and positioned inside the vacuum vessel at their nominal position. The building of the coil winding can now begin.

(Photo Christophe Roux CEA-IRFM)

Read all the latest from WEST in Newsletter 11 .

An 18-month development program to prototype remote handling tooling for the ºÚÁÏÉçapp fusion device was demonstrated on 26 and 27 October as part of collaboration between the European Domestic Agency for ºÚÁÏÉçapp and the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) in the UK.

Representatives from the ºÚÁÏÉçapp, the European agency, Assystem UK, and AMEC Foster Wheeler were at Culham to see a fully remote deployment of prototype remote pipe cutting and welding tooling developed by Culham's RACE (Remote Applications in Challenging Environments).

Under a grant from the European Domestic Agency, RACE and CCFE's Engineering Implementation Department have produced a set of prototype tools intended for eventual use maintaining the neutral beam heating systems at ºÚÁÏÉçapp. Up to now, remote cutting and welding of process piping to the required codes, and under the challenging conditions of the ºÚÁÏÉçapp tokamak, had not been demonstrated, and is one of the higher risk areas across the ºÚÁÏÉçapp remote maintenance strategy.

ºÚÁÏÉçapp will rely on remote handling for maintenance operations where space and/or environmental conditions in the machine do not allow manual intervention. Interconnected components, pipes, cranes and tooling will all need to be routinely repaired and maintained with millimetric accuracy.

Read the full reports of the event on the and  websites.

At its seventeenth meeting in November 2015, the ºÚÁÏÉçapp Council named ​Won Namkung, from Korea, to succeed Robert Iotti as Chair effective 1 January 2016.

Dr Namkung is a Professor Emeritus of Physics at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) in southwest Korea and Executive Adviser at the .

In the course of his career, he contributed to the construction of KSTAR, Korea's first all-superconducting tokamak. He has also been involved in Korea's contribution to ºÚÁÏÉçapp, serving as the project's first Management Assessor.

Dr Namkung received his BS in Physics from Seoul National University and his PhD in Physics from University of Tennessee.

Robert Iotti, from the US, finishes his two-year term as Council Chair on 31 December 2015.

--Raphael Rosen, PPPL A team of physicists led by Stephen Jardin of the US Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has discovered a mechanism that prevents the electrical current flowing through fusion plasma from repeatedly peaking and crashing. This behaviour, known as a "sawtooth cycle," can cause instabilities within the plasma's core. The team, which included scientists from General Atomics (San Diego) and the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (Germany), performed calculations on the Edison computer at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Using M3D-C1, a program they developed that creates three-dimensional simulations of fusion plasmas, the team found that under certain conditions a helix-shaped whirlpool of plasma forms around the centre of the tokamak. The swirling plasma acts like a dynamo—a moving fluid that creates electric and magnetic fields. Together these fields prevent the current flowing through plasma from peaking and crashing. The researchers found two specific conditions under which the plasma behaves like a dynamo. First, the magnetic lines that circle the plasma must rotate exactly once, both the long way and the short way around the doughnut-shaped configuration, so an electron or ion following a magnetic field line would end up exactly where it began. Second, the pressure in the centre of the plasma must be significantly greater than at the edge, creating a gradient between the two sections. This gradient combines with the rotating magnetic field lines to create spinning rolls of plasma that swirl around the tokamak and gives rise to the dynamo that maintains equilibrium and produces stability. Image: A cross-section of the virtual plasma showing where the magnetic field lines intersect the plane. The central section has field lines that rotate exactly once. (Credit: Stephen Jardin) Read the full article at .

One of the most spectacular operations ever performed on the ºÚÁÏÉçapp site was the lifting of the Assembly Hall roof structure during the night of 10 to 11 September 2015.

Hoisting the 700-ton structure to a height of 60 metres was a long and delicate operation monitored and controlled by computer. This , produced by the companies and organizations involved in the operation, captures the technical achievement as it unfolded.

​The ºÚÁÏÉçapp vacuum vessel is composed of nine sectors, two of which are being procured by Korea and seven by Europe.

In Italy, production of a first sector has begun at the AMW consortium (Ansaldo - Mangiarotti - Walter Tosto). Click to watch a video of manufacturing progress at AMW.

​The editorial board of the journal Nuclear Fusion has selected Rob Goldston, a fusion researcher and Princeton University professor of astrophysical sciences, as winner of the 2015 Nuclear Fusion Award. The award recognizes Goldston's paper describing a new model for estimating the width of the scrape-off layer — the hot plasma that is exhausted in fusion facilities called tokamaks — as the most outstanding paper published by the journal in 2012.

The journal will present the honor, which includes an engraved award, a certificate and $2,500, during the 2016 Fusion Energy Conference in Kyoto, Japan.

On receiving the reward Goldston said, "It is a great pleasure to win this scientific award for a paper written three years after I stepped down from my leadership post at PPPL. It is fun to be back in the fray working with top-quality scientists, helping to make sense of very important, and very carefully measured, data."

Read the full article on the PPPL .

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ºÚÁÏÉçapp launched its new website this week! A techier look to go with our ultra-hi-tech mission. For all those friends who ask you over lunch: "How does magnetic confinement fusion work — really?" You now have a place to point them to. And don't miss the machine pages! If you find yourself swooning over a cryostat or a divertor in 3D, you're not alone ...

The ramp-up time for achieving a fusion reaction inside a tokamak machine varies, depending on a certain number of boundary conditions such as volume, temperature and density and, of course, the fuels injected.   In the auditorium of the Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering, at Prague's Czech Technical University, all the variables were in place on Sunday night—drink, food, room temperature and body density—and so it took less than two minutes after the official opening of this year's FuseNet PhD event before the room started to buzz and the volume tripled. The only thing missing to make the molecules fuse on the dance floor was the music, which soon set in very vibrantly in form of the Apples, a local female rock band.   With a record participation of 130 students, the fifth edition of the FuseNet PhD event is off to an enthusiastic start. Physicist Richard Pitts, from the ºÚÁÏÉçapp, opened the scientific part of the program on Monday 16 November with an overview of the ºÚÁÏÉçapp Project, assuring those assembled in the auditorium that they were entering the discipline at exactly the right time. "You are at the golden age of fusion."    The event, organized each year under the umbrella of the association with the financial support of , brings together a large fraction of the PhD students in Europe that work in the fields of fusion science and engineering. Young researchers get the opportunity to share their ideas, learn from each other's experiences and develop a network of contacts.   "We are seeing some very high quality research," said Jean-Marie Noterdaeme from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching and Head of the Advisory Board of the European Erasmus Mundus program.   Follow the three-day event through the dedicated FuseNet .   -- Sabina Griffith