ºÚÁÏÉçapp

Fusion energy research is serious business. Generally, it is a lifelong commitment, involving long hours and weekends, along with optimism and dogged determination.

Recently, fusion research has been increasingly in the news, as construction moves forward on ºÚÁÏÉçapp in France, which is being designed and built by nations which together encompass most of the world's population. As an inexhaustible source of power, using seawater-derived fuel which is universally available, fusion 
energy is recognized as an urgent requirement for the future.

John Sheffield, who has been involved in fusion research for more than 50 years, has seen it all, including the foibles, missteps, failed experiments, and mistranslations that a global scientific research effort create. He has written "Fun in Fusion Research" to capture the very human and fun side of serious science.

Read a review in the attached pdf.

Most scientific breakthroughs have occurred in boring buildings. Can a new generation of architects change that?

Today, expensive new physics buildings are being planned all around the world. The question is, are they any different from—or better than—their shabby predecessors? Should they express something of the wonder of the world they are built to examine? And will they help answers to the biggest questions emerge?

Like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the ºÚÁÏÉçapp Tokamak will be a monumental piece of machinery, a container capable of generating—and containing—a mini sun. ºÚÁÏÉçapp's Headquarters building, designed by Marseille-based architect Rudy Ricciotti and completed last year, features a dramatic undulating facade. There are many more buildings planned for the site, some more extravagant than others, but the box containing the Tokamak (the plasma-filled doughnut-shaped ball-of-fire container) is disappointingly utilitarian, looking like a big, boxy waste incinerator. Yet here, together with CERN, we have buildings searching for the holy grails of science—the Higgs boson, or "God particle", and the power of the sun. These really are our contemporary cathedrals, buildings embodying the power and strangeness of the subatomic world. Yet they express nothing of the wonder that the cathedrals tried to convey.

 

Read the full article on the  of the Financial Times Magazine.​

Princeton astrophysicist Lyman Spitzer Jr. (1914-1997) was among the 20th century's most visionary scientists. His major influences range from founding the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and its quest for fusion energy, to inspiring the development of the Hubble Space Telescope and its images of the far corners of the universe.

To honor Spitzer's achievements, some 60 scientists from around the world gathered at Princeton University 18-20 October for a 100th birthday celebration of the pioneering physicist. The event, sponsored by the Princeton Department of Astrophysical Sciences and hosted by Princeton astrophysicist and department chair David Spergel, ranged from personal reminiscences of Spitzer the man, to discussions of the latest developments in the fields of fusion, astrophysics and laboratory plasma science that he heavily influenced.

Read more on the .​

A magnetic filament of solar material erupted on the sun in late September, breaking the quiet conditions in a spectacular fashion. The 200,000 mile long filament ripped through the sun's atmosphere, the corona, leaving behind what looks like a canyon of fire. The glowing canyon traces the channel where magnetic fields held the filament aloft before the explosion. Visualizers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. combined two days of satellite data to create a short movie of this gigantic event on the sun.

In reality, the sun is not made of fire, but of something called plasma: particles so hot that their electrons have boiled off, creating a charged gas that is interwoven with magnetic fields. 

These were captured on Sept. 29-30, 2013, by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, which constantly observes the sun in a variety of wavelengths. â€‹

Often the food analogies applied to tokamaks centre around doughnuts, due to the shape of magnetic field that confines the hot fusion plasma. But as one delves deeper into the complicated world of gyrokinetics, the simplistic doughnut transforms into a more complex banana orbit in a journey from the ideal to the real world.

The premise of the tokamak is to construct a doughnut shaped magnetic field and then the plasma particles will merrily spiral around it for ever. Enter an uncomfortable reality of geometry; as you can see in the main image above, the magnets are closer together in the centre of the torus (the hole of the doughnut) than they are around the outside. This means the magnetic field is not uniform: it is stronger in the inside part of the ring.

This means that the helical path the particle follows is not symmetrical. A tighter turn on the high field (inner) side of the line and looser on the outside leads to a drift either upwards or downwards (depending on the direction of rotation). This is the beginning of our banana orbit, as shown in the projected cross-section at the left-hand side of the figure. As an example, let's follow a particle on the inside of the banana halfway up, gradually creeping downwards to trace the banana's inner edge.

 

Read the full article on the EFDA-JET .

Last Friday's report from the confirms the huge danger from our continued dependence on fossil fuel. But one simple thing can break this dependence. It needs to be cheaper to produce non-carbon than it is by digging up coal, gas or oil. Once this happens, most of the coal, gas and oil will automatically be left undisturbed in the ground.

To make non-carbon energy become competitive is a major scientific challenge, not unlike the challenge of developing the atom bomb or sending a man to the moon. Science rose to those challenges because a clear goal and timetable were set and enough public money was provided for the research. These programmes had high political profile and public visibility. They attracted many of the best minds of the age.

The issue of and energy is even more important and it needs the same treatment. In most countries, there is at present too little public spending on non-carbon energy research. Instead, we need a major international research effort, with a clear goal and a clear timetable.

Read the full article by David King and Richard Layard in .

 

Scientists at the UK's Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) have run final experiments on the MAST tokamak on Friday 27 September before starting a major overhaul of the device that will pave the way for a prototype fusion plant.

"It's a bittersweet moment for us because we are saying goodbye to the old machine but at the same time, we are already looking forward to the new one," said the CCFE spokesman Nick Holloway.

"At 4pm today, we will run the last plasmas and within minutes after that, engineers will move in to shut down the tokamak for the next 18 months. By Monday, the roof beams in the MAST machine area will have been taken off before the 25-tonne MAST vessel will be lifted on a big crane and moved to the assembly hall."

The £30m upgrade is set to make MAST (the Mega Ampere Spherical Tokamak), a cutting edge facility. It will increase its power and enable testing technologies that will improve the knowledge base needed for the construction of ºÚÁÏÉçapp, but also to test systems for the DEMO prototype fusion power plant.

 

Read the full article at .

 

The European Domestic Agency (Fusion for Energy) has produced a new clip on ºÚÁÏÉçapp site works. See the two-minute video on ºÚÁÏÉçapp's critical networks .

​The sun pours out an amazing amount of energy. Only a small fraction of the sun's total output reaches us, yet it powers our entire ecosystem. All the plants and animals on planet earth rely on this warmth for light and food. Surprisingly, though, the sun is not a terribly good fusion reactor, for its size. In terms of power output per volume, JET at its best is over 700 times better, and ºÚÁÏÉçapp will be a staggering 2,150 times more efficient fusion reactor than the sun.

ºÚÁÏÉçapp's plasma volume will be 840 cubic metres, which with the target of 500 megawatt output power equates to nearly 600 kilowatts per cubic metre—the most efficient fusion reactor not only on Earth, but in the whole solar system!

Read more at .

​At first, it's hard to know whether to take the company known as  (PSS) seriously. For one thing, the PSS offices, a few rooms in a nondescript building in nondescript Plainsboro, N.J., right above the Sugar and Sunshine Bakery, don't exactly suggest the imminent conquest of the final frontier. The company's ambitions, by contrast, certainly do — but those sound so crazy that you have to wonder if they're serious. This team of a half-dozen or so scientists and engineers is determined to send human beings to Mars, launch robotic probes to the outer solar system, send missions to Alpha Centauri and more, and do it all with rockets powered by nuclear fusion.

Read more .

​Welcome to the premiere issue of "Quest," the annual magazine of the US Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). We are pleased to provide this news of our strides in advancing research into fusion energy and plasma science—two topics of vital interest to the United States and the world.

Read Quest .

​Measuring the number of neutrons produced is one of the most basic yardsticks of success of a fusion experiment, yet it's surprisingly tricky to ensure your neutron detectors are calibrated correctly, says the leader of the team that has just finished calibrating JET's neutron diagnostic systems.

"The physics was only a part of the activity," says Project Leader, Dr Brian Syme. "Obtaining the neutron source, the safety issues and all the engineering developments associated with source handling were three quarters of the project!"

The process sounds simple enough — simply hold a radioactive source that produces a known number of neutrons at a set of known locations in the torus. From the detector counts you have an answer. However to get to that moment took the team three years of careful planning, including intensive neutronics calculations by colleagues in the Slovenian and Swedish associations.

Read more on the  website.

 

​Chinese and American scientists have successfully conducted their first joint test of two fusion reactors.

The experiment on the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), a fusion energy reactor built by Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the DIII-D, a tokamak machine developed by General Atomics in the USA, found that it's feasible for a tokamak fully relying on bootstrap current and non-induced current to run in a high-performance and steady way, Anhui Daily reported, citing the Hefei-based institute.   Read more

 

​Follow this link for a with Stephen O. Dean, a 50-year fusion veteran and the founder of Fusion Power Associates.

​Science is awesome. Physics is awesome! Here is a photo collection of huge and fantastical scientific experiments and machinery, including the European tokamak, JET.

Read more .

 

​VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland's research results indicate that joint planning of the reactor structure and remote maintenance system can significantly improve the utilisation rates of future fusion power plants. Designing a reactor with the simplest structure possible can reduce maintenance periods, as well as building expenses and overhead costs. Since 1995, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has participated in two international projects aimed at building a full-scale fusion reactor and commercialising fusion as an energy source.

Read more .

​Fission-ignited fusion systems have been operational — in weapon form — since the 1950s. Leveraging insights gained from the weapons physics program, a Z-Pinch device could be used to ignite a thermonuclear deuterium trigger. The fusion neutrons will induce fission reaction in a surrounding uranium or thorium liner, releasing sufficient energy to further confine and heat the fusion plasma.

The combined energy release from fission and fusion would then be directed using a magnetic nozzle to produce useful thrust. This type of concept could provide the efficiency of open cycle fusion propulsion devices with the relative small size and simplicity of fission systems; and would provide a radical improvement in our ability to explore destinations across the solar system and beyond. This proposal is modified version of last year's proposal - addressing issues raised during that evaluation.

Read more and see the video on the  website.

By Jeff Garberson

In the mid-1950s, the small, secret weapons laboratory that eventually became Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was more vulnerable than is commonly recognized to being marginalized or closed, according to a physicist who is studying the Laboratory's early years.   After three failed nuclear tests in the early to mid 1950s, there were recommendations in influential government circles that the young laboratory either be closed or reduced to a mere support role for Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico, the physicist found.  In another surprising finding, the reversal of fortune that brought success and recognition to the young Livermore laboratory in the late 1950s may have resulted from the illnesses of three of the laboratory's leaders, Ernest Lawrence, Edward Teller and Herbert York in 1954. They were laid up for months, forcing the responsibility of scientific leadership on to the shoulders of two brilliant, young physicists, John Foster and Harold Brown.   The originality of these two scientists and the teams they assembled led to nuclear weapon design changes that were soon demonstrated in successful explosive tests, which led to warheads small enough to fit on submarine-carried missiles. They altered the nuclear arsenal forever.   Read more at . 

John Greenwald

Leading experts from around the world gathered at the US Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) in July to focus on a key issue for the development of fusion energy: Improving ways to predict and mitigate disruptions that can destroy magnetically confined plasmas that are needed for fusion reactions.

Confronting this challenge will be crucial for ºÚÁÏÉçapp. "The future of magnetic fusion research hangs on ºÚÁÏÉçapp being successful," said Amitava Bhattacharjee, head of the Theory Department at PPPL, which convened the 17-19 July workshop. "And ºÚÁÏÉçapp will need to avoid disruptions or mitigate them when they occur."

Workshop participants from left: PPPL Director Stewart Prager and Theory Head Amitava Bhattacharjee with David Campbell, director of plasma operations at ºÚÁÏÉçapp. (Photo by Elle Starkman/ PPPL Office of Communications)

Read more on website.

​When you take a flight on a jet aircraft you must go through a number of checkpoints in the airport before and after your flight — security, passport control and so on. The JET fusion experiment also has its own "airport" — the Beryllium Handling Facility: everything that goes in to and comes out of JET is processed there.

Calling it the Beryllium Handling Facility is perhaps inaccurate, as it is not only beryllium that is processed here. As well as the beryllium, which is toxic to humans, there are also radioactive components to be dealt with; either components that retain traces of radioactive tritium fuel, or that have been left radioactive by bombardment from neutrons emitted during fusion reactions. Within the three sealed workshops in the large assembly hall adjacent to the JET torus hall, components are inspected and cleaned, and waste is separated and bagged up ready for storage.   Plasma-Wall Interaction Physicist Dr Kalle Heinola refurbishing a tile diagnostic in the beryllium handling facility.  

Read more on the  website.