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The European Physical Society (EPS) has named Princeton physicist Nat Fisch winner of the 2015 Hannes Alfvén Prize, awarded for outstanding contributions to plasma physics.

Director of the Princeton Program in Plasma Physics and professor and associate chair of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University, Fisch received the prize for fundamental studies of wave-particle interactions and for predicting new plasma phenomena, including new ways of creating electrical currents using radio-frequency waves. [...] Fisch has been studying waves in plasmas for years and in many different contexts. "the problem of using waves to transform energy in plasma from one form to another is one I returned to again and again during my career," he said. In addition to pursuing how wave effects might make fusion energy practical, he is currently researching how to use plasma to reach the next generation of laser beam intensities.
Read the full article .

​One of the biggest challenges facing fusion physicists is controlling the plasma inside a tokamak reactor.

 

Plasma — a gas of the fuels that are heated to start the fusion process — is difficult to keep stable, and seeks to escape the magnetic field that confines it within the machine. This results in 'instabilities' which make the plasma wobble and fluctuate, taking energy away from it and affecting the tokamak's performance.

  Decades of research on tokamak experiments worldwide has led to a deep understanding of a myriad of different plasma instabilities with exotic names (from Edge Localised Modes to Tearing Modes, Kink instabilities and Sawteeth). Just as importantly, researchers are developing methods to stop them occurring, reduce their effect or stabilise them altogether.   Amongst all these challenges has been the fact that most of these instabilities, certainly those deep inside the plasma, are invisible to high-speed camera videos — until now, that is. University of York PhD student David Ryan is currently working at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy and he applied cutting-edge video magnification techniques to footage of plasmas in the to see what would emerge.   Read more on website

​Think science and art are poles apart? Think again. Three artists who have been inspired by nuclear fusion will display their work at the  "Making a Sun on Earth"' exhibition, which runs at the Cornerstone Arts Centre in Didcot, UK from 10 March to 26 April. And they hope their collaboration with Culham Centre for Fusion Energy will challenge people's ideas about science.

Find out more .

​T��� next Fusion Summer University at the Max-Planck-Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP)will be held in Garching (near Munich) from 14 to 18 September 2015. The course covers the main aspects of plasma physics with emphasis on nuclear fusion.

The application deadline 31 May 2015. For more information please click .

 

A few years before ������app is due to come into operation, the advanced superconducting "satellite" tokamak JT-60SA, conducted under the Broader Approach Agreement between Japan and Europe, will begin operation. 

Another milestone on the road to assembly was achieved in February, as six European-built helium pressure vessels—destined for JT-60SA's cryogenic system—successfully passed final works acceptance tests and can now be readied for shipment to Japan.

The acceptance tests, which consisted of verifications to ensure that the components conform to international standards and to ensure that there are no defects, was carried out during a period of seven days each.

In total, the six pressure vessels will store 3.6 tons of gaseous helium. Each 22-metre pressure vessel weighs about 73 tons, and has a diameter of 4 metres and a volume of 250 m3. As the vessels will store pure helium, the tightness and cleanliness requirements are demanding. If a fast discharge of the current in the superconducting coils is necessary, one of the vessels is also designed to receive cold helium (-254 degrees C) discharged from the coils through the cryogenic system quench line.

The contract for the supply and transport to Japan of the pressure vessels and their equipment was awarded by the European Domestic Agency to A. Silva Matos Metalomecanica SA (ASMM, Portugal).

Read the full article on the European Domestic Agency .

 

​Knowledge is not cheap. The world spends more than $1 trillion a year on research and development, including basic research. The biggest projects—"research infrastructures" like particle accelerators and DNA databases—carry correspondingly big price tags.
������app, the experimental, international fusion reactor in the south of France, is taking years and more than EUR 13 billion to build. The Square Kilometre Array, the world's biggest radio telescope now under development in South Africa and other southern countries, will cost well more than EUR 1.5 billion   It's all great science, no doubt. But is it a great investment?     Read the from Science|Business, prefaced by Rolf Heuer, Director-General, CERN.

​Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) is one of the partners in a materials research project that has recently been awarded significant European funding.

The project will explore techniques that can accurately examine engineering components at a range of sizes and scales — right down to the nanoscale analysis carried out in Culham's Materials Research Laboratory (MRL).

To get a consistent picture of the properties of a material, researchers need to examine it at different length scales. This new study will look at how changing the specimen size or the size of the probe used for testing affects the measured engineering properties. Test methods or design rules can then be developed that compensate for such 'size effects.'

It is hoped that European companies can use the results to design and manufacture better components with longer life and lower energy use. The work will also benefit the fusion and fission research sectors, where smaller samples represent less of a safety risk when examining the condition of components.

Led by the , the project consortium brings together major industry players such as EDF, AMEC, AWE and Tata Steel with universities and research institutes around Europe. The grant of ~EUR 1.8 million has been made by European Association of National Metrology Institutes (EURAMET).

Read more on the  website.

​T��� of Fusion for Energy newsletter is now online. Find out how contractors feel about ������app's business potential, read about top management changes in Barcelona, catch up on design reviews and more.

Operators at EAST, the Chinese superconducting tokamak, announced in the February issue of the EAST Newsletter that the auxiliary heating system has passed a national acceptance review and is officially stamped "well qualified" to enter operation.

Construction on the auxiliary heating system, which consists of 4 MW neutral beam injectors and 6 MW lower hybrid current drives, began in November 2011. The additional heating power on EAST will enable high-level plasma physics research including testing for ������app.

The acceptance panel commended the construction, complete "with high quality, within budget and one year ahead of schedule."

Aiming at long-pulse plasma discharges, a series of experimental techniques has been developed on EAST in recent years. Tremendous efforts have been made during past two years to enhance EAST's capabilities—nearly every sub-system except superconducting magnets has been upgraded or modified to enable higher performance and truly steady state operation.

Read the full article in the February issue of the EAST Newsletter, attached.

On 3 February 2015, FuseNet (the European Fusion Education Network) and ENEN (the European Nuclear Education Network) signed a Memorandum of Understanding at the General Assembly meeting of FuseNet that was held at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy. It marked the start for further cooperation between the European fusion and fission education networks.   ENEN is older than FuseNet, but similar in many ways. As the nuclear aspects of fusion energy become more prominent -- ������app is truly a nuclear device -- the need to provide fusion students and engineers with proper education and training in this field becomes ever larger. Likewise, nuclear engineers are in high demand in the fusion enterprises now, and they may benefit from a fusion training.   Prof. Walter Ambrosini (president of ENEN, left) and Prof. Niek Lopes Cardozo (president of FuseNet, right) sign the Memorandum of Understanding between the two networks.

 

Read more on the  website.

​February 11, 2015 marks five years in space for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which provides incredibly detailed images of the whole sun 24 hours a day. Capturing an image more than once per second, SDO has provided an unprecedentedly clear picture of how massive explosions on the sun grow and erupt ever since its launch on Feb. 11, 2010. The imagery is also captivating, allowing one to watch the constant ballet of solar material through the sun's atmosphere, the corona. 

In honor of SDO's fifth anniversary, NASA has released a video showcasing highlights from the last five years of sun watching. Watch the movie to see giant clouds of solar material hurled out into space, the dance of giant loops hovering in the corona, and huge sunspots growing and shrinking on the sun's surface. 

The imagery is an example of the kind of data that SDO provides to scientists. By watching the sun in different wavelengths — and therefore different temperatures — scientists can watch how material courses through the corona, which holds clues to what causes eruptions on the sun, what heats the sun's atmosphere up to 1,000 times hotter than its surface, and why the sun's magnetic fields are constantly on the move.

View the on the NASA website.

​T��� ������app Business Forum 2015 (IBF/15) will take place in Marseille, France from 25 to 27 March 2015.

Already, close to 400 participants from 200 companies have registered to participate. (A real-time update is available .)

The agenda is now finalized and includes 14 theme workshops bringing together more than one hundred speakers from the ������app, the procurement agencies for ������app—the Domestic Agencies—and key suppliers.    Registration for one-to-one meetings, either "business to business" or "business to customers," will open in a few days.   IBF/15 is a unique occasion for companies to approach the ������app Project and to investigate possibilities for involvement or partnership around upcoming tender offers.

Visit the IBF/15  for more information.

​T��� 42nd International Zvenigorod Conference for plasma physics and thermonuclear fusion was held on 9-13 February, near Moscow, Russia.

At this annual event, experts from inside Russia and from abroad gather to discuss recent achievements in the areas of high and low temperature plasma research, controlled fusion, and developments in plasma and beam technologies.

Part of the conference is traditionally devoted to progress in ������app. In the presence of Anatoly Krasilnikov, head of the Russian Domestic Agency, representatives from ������app Russia and from the research centres and industries involved in the project gave more than 50 oral presentations and reports on the first day of the conference on the progress in ������app procurement and manufacturing. Topics included the magnet system, in-vessel plasma-facing components, and diagnostic instruments.

The presentations generated wide interest among the members of the expert community, including representatives of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the State Corporation Rosatom and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

-- Alexander Petrov, ������app Russia

The following was posted recently on "Tokamak Tales," a blog run by fusion engineers and physicists at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in the UK.

By Sarah Medley It's a really exciting time for fusion research right now — we're building the next-generation tokamak ������app and we're working towards a demonstration power station (known as DEMO), to put fusion electricity on the grid before 2050. However, the dream of fusion as the ultimate energy source will never become reality without one essential ingredient: people! We need people to continue the research, to operate ������app and design DEMO! So it is essential that the fusion community considers how to inspire this next generation of fusion scientists and engineers - often referred to as "the ������app generation."   Fortunately, the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) already has a strong outreach program dedicated to this goal. We give tours of our JET and MAST fusion experiments to A-level and university students, and we take the Sun Dome science roadshow into primary schools. However, the graduates realized that there was a "gap in the market" when it comes to secondary school students, so we decided to develop something specifically aimed at inspiring this age group to pursue science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) to A-level and beyond!

And behold, the CCFE Fusion Workshop was born. Developed entirely by CCFE graduates, the Fusion Workshop is an interactive activity session that uses hands-on science and engineering demonstrations to bring the real-world applications of STEM subjects to life in the context of fusion research. What exactly does that mean, you ask? Well basically, we assemble a crack team of graduates, pile them into a van with a load of demonstration kits and send them off to a local secondary school to invade a physics lesson. [...] You can read more about the Fusion Workshop initiative at "."

Professor Steve Cowley, director of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, and Dr Michael Dittmar, a researcher with the Institute of Particle Physics at ETH Zurich, debate in a 37-min podcast that aired on The Guardian's ''Science Weekly'' program on 26 January. 

The discussion ranged from reactor design challenges to the politics and finances of ������app. 

Listen to the podcast .

​Nuclear fusion is the dream of energy scientists the world over, because it promises limitless, clean electricity. Most efforts to kickstart the process use high-intensity lasers, insane magnetic field and super-hot hydrogen plasmas. But there may be a more humble alternative. It's called sonofusion, and it involves bubbles...

When liquid undergoes rapid changes in pressure, cavities can form — seemingly from nowhere, but usually around some kind of impurity or imperfection in the fluid. The changing pressure causes this cavity to expand and contract: this is a bubble, and its method of creation is known as cavitation. In particularly violent pressure fields, the bubble can contract so quickly and with so much force that it collapses entirely, producing a shock wave. This phenomenon's what causes the dramatic pitting on boat propellor and water pumps, where high fluctuating pressures causes bubbles to form and collapse.

But in the controlled environment of a laboratory, the bubbles can do more than cause damage. Way back in 1934, at the University of Cologne, H. Frenzel and H. Schultes turned of the lights in their laboratory, put an ultrasound transducer in a tank of photographic developer fluid, and turned it on. They were hoping to speed up the development process of photographic film — but instead, they noticed dots of light that appeared for a split-second at a time This was the first evidence of a process called sonoluminescene, where the large quantities of energy generated by a collapsing bubble cause light to be emitted. And where there's light, there's energy.

[...]

Read the full article on the website.

Photo by R.Classen /used under re-licensing agreement via rcphotostock.com

 

​On an icy and sunny morning, a delegation of engineers, designers and design office coordinators from the seven Domestic Agencies went down into the Tokamak foundations for a technical visit.

Part of the CAD (Computer Aided Design) Working Group, the 15 members of the delegation were on site for the 13th CAD Working Group Workshop that took place at ������app Headquarters from 27 to 29 January.

The group was warmly welcomed by Laurent Patisson, Section Leader for Nuclear Buildings, who took them for a one-hour tour to the heart of the ������app platform: the foundations of the Tokamak Complex.

After a first glance from the belvedere—the viewpoint from the northern corner of the Tokamak Complex worksite where visitors are usually taken—the group went onto the Tokamak Complex floor (the B2 slab), which was icy in some places due to a recent cold snap. 

Although the delegation was more than familiar with the design and the drawings of the ������app facilities, for many it was the first time on site. Philippe Le-Minh, Design Office coordination officer, was particularly thrilled to "feel all the activity going on," while Pierre-Yves Chaffard, head of Technical Support Services for the European Domestic Agency, remarked that it is "always interesting to see with our eyes, what we are used to seeing through our computers."   

As the group returned to ������app Headquarters for the rest of their meetings, Geun Hong Kim, Design Office team leader for the Korean Domestic Agency, summed up the general feeling: "Now I can believe that ������app will be successful."

-- Julie Marcillat

​T��� Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research, ������app's neighbour in Saint Paul-lez-Durance, has published issue #8 of the WEST newsletter.

The issue features a report about the integration of WEST into the EUROfusion ������app Physics Programme, progress on the calibration of diagnostics in the machine, and the test deployment of a WEST inspection robot inside of the EAST tokamak.

WEST stands for (W Environment in Steady-state Tokamak), where "W" is the chemical symbol of tungsten. The Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research is modifying the Tore Supra plasma facility to become a test platform open to all ������app partners.

Read the eighth issue of the WEST Newsletter .

The JET machine area is a hive of activity as the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) prepares the facility on behalf of for its next run of experiments later in 2015.

The shutdown period is an opportunity for engineers to tune up key systems on JET and to install new components to improve the tokamak's performance. This time round, the focus is on plasma fuelling and heating systems. The high frequency pellet injector, which propels frozen deuterium fuel into the JET plasma, is being optimized and repositioned to achieve more reliable operation. A refurbished antenna—the ion cyclotron resonance heating system, which produces radiowaves that resonate with the plasma particles and heat them up—will also be plugged in. JET's antenna is similar to the one that the next-step ������app Tokamak will use. Bringing it back online will mean that experiments can simulate ������app conditions more accurately, and has the added advantage of helping to flush out impurities from the core of the plasma.

European fusion researchers are keen to see how the 2014 JET tests have left their mark on the machine. The shutdown is enabling CCFE's team of remote handling engineers to remove sample tiles from the interior of JET so their condition can be analyzed. Inspecting the tiles will yield valuable information about how the beryllium and tungsten wall lining is being affected by its close proximity to the plasma (another hot topic for ������app). And a remote-controlled vacuum cleaner has been inside JET collecting dust which can also give pointers on the interaction between the plasma and the wall materials.

In a similar vein, a new high-resolution camera has just been taken into the JET chamber to photograph the tiles in the divertor region. In this area, as the name suggests, impurities and waste material are diverted out of the plasma, and the tungsten surfaces of the divertor are exposed to intense heat as a result. The photographic survey is giving scientists the most detailed pictures yet of the condition of this area of the machine.

Read the full article on the CCFE website .

The ������app Business Forum 2015 (IBF/15) will take place in Marseille, France from 25 to 27 March 2015.

Already, 256 participants from 135 companies have registered to participate.

IBF/15 is a unique occasion for companies to approach the ������app Project and to investigate possibilities for involvement or partnership around upcoming tender offers.

Key project actors will present the status of systems. Twelve thematic workshops with presentations will be given by the ������app, the procurement agencies for ������app—the Domestic Agencies—and key suppliers.

Visit the IBF/15 for registration information.