Newsletter | 2002 September
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Fourth ITER Negotiations Meeting: New Site Offers by the EU and Japan
On June 6, delegations from Canada, the European Union (EU), Japan and the Russian Federation made significant progress towards the preparation of an agreement for the joint implementation of the ITER project at their Negotiations meeting hosted by the EU in Cadarache (France). Notable events at this fourth Negotiations meeting [...]
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Commissioner Busquin hopes to see ITER built in Europe
“It would be very good if ITER was built in Europe and I am glad to see that two Member States, France and Spain, have asked to host this facility. I hope the US will join the consortium again and help us to develop this promising technology.” Philippe Busquin, EU [...]
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World Record Plasma Discharge in TORE SUPRA
On July 30th 2002, the engineers and scientists of the Association Euratom-CEA in Cadarache (France) have achieved a three and a half minutes long plasma discharge on Tore Supra, sustained by 3MW of current drive power, thus requiring to exhaust more than 600MJ of thermal energy during the experiment. It [...]
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The New CIEL Plasma Facing Components: a Major Step towards Steady- State, High Power Operation
The main magnetic fusion research activities of the French-Euratom Association take place in the “Department of Controlled Fusion Research” (DRFC), at the CEA Cadarache site in Provence. The flagship of the DRFC programme is the Tore Supra tokamak. Its main role is the investigation of steady-state operation and the associated [...]
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TPL – main component of the CIEL project
The TPL (Toroidal Pump Limiter) has the form of a flat ring of 5m diameter and 0.5m width. In order to extract the particles escaping the plasma, twelve throat-shaped “neutralisers” are located at one of the edges of the ring, under the limiter, each of which is connected to a [...]
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Acceptance criteria reached
This assembly requires a very high degree of quality control to achieve perfect cohesion. The quality of thermal transfer between the surface of the plasma-facing composite and cooling water circulating in the finger is a major criterion of acceptance, for which a dedicated test station was developed at the DRFC. [...]
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Difficult manufacturing process
The complicated manufacture of the fingers involved many other “delicate” procedures; such as the drilling of the water conduits through forty centimetres, for the welding of the “stoppers”, or the “heterogeneous” joint between the copper-alloy and the stainless-steel pipe-work. The result was that the original fabrication and delivery targets of [...]
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Towards steady-state high power plasma discharge
The inconvenience of using the temporary assembly in 2001 (compromising only three sectors of TPL) was largely compensated for by the satisfaction of developing very powerful techniques for testing and qualification of the components and to have been able to preserve a contact with the industrialist which was more of [...]
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Growing Influence on High Level: Women between Career and Family
EFDA Newsletter (E.N.): Congratulations! You are one of only on average 10% of women in top positions in Europe’s scientific system. Did you have any problems to get your C3-position in 1998 because of being female? Sibylle Günter (S.G.): Concerning the job, I had no problems at all. The main [...]
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Fusion Research and Scientific Publications in the Internet Era A commentary from Dr. Alberto Loarte (EFDA Garching, Germany, Divertor Physics Division)
Publication of results is a key activity in scientific research. The publication record of a scientist or institution is frequently used to evaluate their contributions to their field both by other scientists and, more importantly, by the governmental and private institutions, which fund their research. Many aspects of the publication [...]
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2002 JET Restart and Campaign 5: No Spurt but Hurdles
After the 2001 shutdown the restart activity commenced as planned on November 26th with the torus pump down. In January and February 2002 a series of problems with leaking vacuum windows, faults in the cryogenic plant, and a water leak from a window on the Lower Hybrid System delayed the [...]
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Successful meeting of US Fusion Experts in Snowmass, Colorado
Grounded in continuous progress, the world is now at a major decision point how to go forward with the exploration of a burning plasma, dominated by the self-heating from the fusion reactions. The ITER participating countries have already since a long time, chosen ITER as their preferred approach. The US [...]
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New Websites on ITER
The EFDA Technical Working Group (European ITER Site Study group: EISS Group) has been established to prepare the technical basis for European ITER site proposals. Now you can find the EISS studies on our website: http:///www.efda.org > Europe for ITER > EISS New information on Cadarache as a candidate ITER [...]
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First “Advanced Stellarator” at Garching (Germany) closed
On July 31, 2002, at 6.25 p.m. the last experiment was run in the Wendelstein 7-AS stellarator at the Max Planck Institute for Plasmaphysics in Garching (IPP), Germany. The device was closed after 14 years of successful work as the first machine of the“Advanced stellarator” generation. The resources and personnel [...]
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Fusion goes Switzerland: 29th European Physical Society Conference in Montreux
The 29th European Physical Conference on Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion was held at the Centre de Congrès in Montreux, Switzerland from 17 to 21 June 2002. It was organized by the Centre de Recherches en Physique des Plasmas of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, under the chairmanship of [...]
