We invite you to participate in the 17^th edition of the Summer School of Plasma Physics organized by the Institute of Plasma Physics and Laser Microfusion. The event will take place in Kudowa-Zdrój (Poland) on 3-7 June 2024.

Kudowa Summer School "Towards Fusion Energy" is an excellent opportunity for young scientists, master's and PhD students from both Poland and abroad to expand their knowledge of plasma physics. During the School, participants will be able to present their own research achievements, and the best presentations will be awarded.

Lectures conducted by outstanding specialists from leading research centers in the world will cover various aspects of plasma physics, including thermonuclear energy, experiments using plasma, plasma technology and diagnostics.

Registration for the event will start on 7 December 2023 and will last until 11 April 2024.

The deadline for submitting abstracts is 23 February 2024.

Detailed information is available on the school's official website: kudowaschool.ipplm.pl.

Don't miss the opportunity and take part in one of the most important scientific events of the coming year!

EUROfusion announces the successful completion of its third and final deuterium-tritium experimental campaign (DTE3) at the Joint European Torus fusion device (JET). The experiments explored fusion processes and control techniques under similar conditions to and in preparation for future fusion power plants, marking an important leap ahead in our understanding of fusion plasmas.

The experimental campaign at JET was conducted by over 300 scientists participating in EUROfusion from across Europe together with engineering and scientific technical staff at the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. JET is the only existing facility of its kind that can already operate with the high-performance deuterium-tritium fuel mix that will be used in future fusion power plants. While most fusion experiments use fuels like hydrogen or deuterium alone, testing with this deuterium-tritium mix is essential to get as close as possible to the conditions of a real fusion power plant.

The experiments at JET have optimized fusion reactions in deuterium-tritium and developed techniques to manage fuel retention, heat exhaust and materials evolution. This has generated crucial insights for the design and operation of future reactors like the international ITER experiment and the DEMO demonstration fusion power plant as well as for all other efforts worldwide to develop fusion power plants.

Tony Donné, Programme Manager (CEO) at EUROfusion, highlights, "These experiments at JET are a testament to the collaborative spirit and innovation in the EUROfusion community, paving the way for the next generation of fusion research and technology."

EUROfusion's experimental campaign at JET highlights Europe's pivotal role in advancing fusion research and underscores its leadership in the global pursuit of clean, sustainable energy. This campaign marks a significant step forward in developing the technologies and methodologies essential for future fusion power plants.

JET Torus Hall. Credit: UKAEA courtesy of EUROfusion

Why This Experimental Campaign Matters:

• Bridging Past and Future in Fusion Research: The experimental campaign built on experiments at the end of 2021, enhancing our understanding of deuterium-tritium plasmas. This campaign's insights into optimizing fusion reactions and developing novel operational strategies link past learnings with future applications in fusion technology.
• Validating Physics Across Scales and Fuels: Researchers tested new concepts developed in smaller European tokamaks in JET, initially with deuterium and then with a deuterium-tritium fuel mix. This research is key to help understand how processes observed in smaller devices will scale to larger future fusion projects.
• Advancing Tritium Fuel Management: JET has made significant strides in managing the fuel component tritium, pioneering novel monitoring and cleaning technologies including laser-based diagnostic methods like LID-QMS (Laser Induced Desorption – Quadrupole Mass Spectrometry). These innovations are crucial for ITER's future operations, ensuring accurate tritium accountancy and enhancing operational safety.
• Replicating Operational Scenarios: A major success of the DTE3 campaign was its ability to replicate the high-fusion-energy experiments from 2021’s second deuterium-tritium experimental campaign (DTE2). This accomplishment highlights the reliability and maturity of JET's operational methodologies that are essential for the ITER project's future success.
• Integrated Scenarios with Compatible Exhaust Solutions: The campaign involved testing diverse operational scenarios to efficiently manage heat exhaust from the hot, ionised gas fuel (plasma). Researchers focused on dispersing energy at the plasma edge while maintaining high energy levels in the plasma core, a critical balance for reactor feasibility. This included minimizing or eliminating energy outbursts from plasma edge instabilities and implementing innovative heat load management techniques like feedback-controlled impurity gas injections to create a localised radiator plasma zone around the X-point. Additionally, the team demonstrated real-time control of the D-T fuel mix by injecting gas and frozen deuterium pellets, a key method for controlling fusion reactions. These advancements are instrumental for the successful operation of future fusion reactors.
• Enhancing Knowledge of High-Energy Neutron Effects: Focusing on the impact of fusion-born 14.1 MeV neutrons that carry the energy from fusion reactions out of the plasma, the campaign provided insights into their effects on cooling systems and electronics, the latter in collaboration with CERN. This knowledge is essential for designing safe, more efficient future fusion reactors.

The Joint European Torus (JET) is a fusion experiment of the donut-shaped tokamak design located at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire, UK. The facility uses magnetic fields to keep the hot, ionised gas (plasma) away from the vessel's interior walls, enabling safe operation at 150 million degrees Celsius - ten times the temperature at the core of the Sun.

About JET

JET commenced operation in 1983 as a joint European project, undergoing several enhancements to improve its performance over the years. In 1991, JET became the world's first reactor to operate using a 50–50 mix of tritium and deuterium. The facility set numerous fusion records including a record Q-plasma (the ratio of the fusion power produced to the external power put in to heat the plasma) of 0.64 in 1997 and a fusion energy record output of 59 megajoules in a five-second pulse in December 2021. Built by Europe and used collaboratively by European researchers over its lifetime, JET became UKAEA property in October 2021, celebrated its 40th anniversary in June this year, and will cease operations at the end of 2023.

Source: EUROfusion

Dr. Agnieszka Zaraś-Szydłowska from the Department of Laser Plasma Physics and Applications and Dr. Tomasz Fornal from the Department of Nuclear Fusion and Plasma Spectroscopy received NCN grants under the MINIATURA 7 competition for the implementation of individual research activities.

In the MINIATURA 7 competition organized by the National Science Center, researchers could plan their activities in the form of preliminary research, pilot research, research internship, research trip or consultation trip.

Dr. Zaraś-Szydłowska was awarded a grant for preliminary research for the project entitled "Preparation of a diagnostic system for interferometric measurements of femtosecond laser-induced plasma parameters for future research related to inertial fusion."

The project involves the construction and installation of an interferometric diagnostic system, the so-called complex interferometer, to study the parameters of the plasma generated as a result of the interaction of a terawatt laser pulse with a thin foil and its use during an experimental session at the High-Power Laser Laboratory located at the IPPLM. Comprehensive interferometry is a combination of standard interferometry and polarimetry and allows obtaining information on the distribution of electron concentration and spontaneous magnetic fields, which parameters are important in plasma research with a view to obtaining inertial fusion and in astrophysical research. The main goal of the project is to record high-quality comprehensive interferograms for various plasma expansion times.

The second winner, Dr. Fornal, will complete a research internship at the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics in Greifswald. "Development of numerical codes for studying the behavior of light impurities in the plasma of the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator" is the topic of his project.

During the three-month internship, work will be carried out on the development of software for data acquisition from the C/O monitor spectroscopic system for the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) stellarator. The activities will include the development of a code for operating the detectors, taking into account the specificity of fusion experiments, as well as the creation of numerical tools for the analysis of experimental data. The internship will enable Dr. Fornal to test the software in experimental conditions, providing the necessary access to the intranet infrastructure of the W7-X stellarator. The ultimate goal of the project is to obtain high-quality measurement data for precise analyzes of light impurities in the W7-X plasma.

We would like to congratulate the winners and wish them success in their research work!

Photo: IPPLM High-Power Laser Laboratory. © IPPLM

The Institute of Plasma Physics and Laser Microfusion has become a partner of the European Innovation Council (EIC). The EIC was established under Horizon Europe to support breakthrough innovation. EIC partners are selected under the EIC Ecosystem Partnership and Co-Investment Support program.

Among services offered by the IPPLM under the EIC are:

• Conducting technical tests and analyses, including compliance tests
• Manufacturing of equipment and devices related to conducted research and development works
• Preparation of opinions and expertise other than scientific research and development works

The IPPLM profile in the EIC catalog is available at: https://partnerservices.eismea.eu/partners

Fusion studies are of strategic importance for the civilizational and economic development of the community of European countries and the whole world. The IPPLM, as a leader and national coordinator of research work in Poland in the field of plasma physics and the development of nuclear fusion technology, contributes in many fields of activities in national and international projects, which are the subject of the cooperation of a number of partners. In general, but not exhaustively, the most propitious areas for mutual cooperation are in the scope of energy, environment and technology, are plasma accelerators, pulsed plasma neutron sources, irradiation target improvements, materials testing and research, developments related to IFMIF-DONES facility, developments related to JET, W7X, ITER and many others fusion devices.

Researchers from the EUROfusion consortium announced scientific results from their record-breaking experimental campaign at the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion facility in 2021. These results, announced at the 29th IAEA Fusion Energy Conference in London, include the first observations of alpha heating, the process by which the fusion reaction can keep its fuel hot. Other important results include control techniques to protect the walls of fusion machines, heating techniques, and ways to recover fusion fuel absorbed in the walls of the machine. The work will prove crucial to operate future fusion experimental machines such as ITER and demonstrates the potential of fusion as a future energy source, say the researchers.

In 2021, the EUROfusion consortium of fusion laboratories around Europe, including Polish researchers from the Institute of Plasma Physics and Laser Microfusion (IPPLM) in Warsaw, ran a dedicated experimental campaign at the Joint European Torus facility (JET) in Culham, UK to explore the extreme conditions expected in the international ITER fusion energy research project and the fusion power plants to follow.

The researchers reached conditions including temperatures of 150 million degrees Celsius inside the donut-shaped cloud of plasma (hot, charged gas) that is suspended inside JET's magnetic field cage.

"One of our most eye-catching results is the first detailed observation of the fusion fuel keeping itself hot through alpha heating. This is the process where high-energy helium ions (alpha particles) coming out of the fusion reaction transfer their heat to the surrounding fuel mix to keep the fusion process going", says Costanza Maggi, a UKAEA Fellow and former JET Task Force Leader. "Studying this process under realistic conditions is crucial to developing fusion power plants."

JET interior with superimposed plasma. Credit: UKAEA courtesy of EUROfusion

First look at alpha heating and other results

The results presented by the researchers will prove crucial to inform the design and operation of future fusion experimental machines running on deuterium-tritium (a fusion fuel mix of two hydrogen isotopes used to produce fusion energy) fuel. Most results have been published in a special issue of the scientific journal Nuclear Fusion, with the work on alpha heating appearing in the prestigious scientific journal Physical Review Letters.

• The first observations of alpha heating, where the high-energy helium ions (alpha particles) produced by fusion reactions keep the surrounding fuel mix hot enough without disturbing fusion conditions.
• A successful demonstration of a control technique to protect the walls of the exhaust system. This divertor is the only part of a tokamak (a donut-shaped device used to confine hot plasma) that comes into direct contact with the hot fuel and needs to withstand more intense conditions than spaceships re-entering Earth's atmosphere.
• The experiments confirmed predictions from advanced computer models for heat transport inside the plasma, which are crucial to extrapolate results from current experimental setups to larger future machines like ITER and DEMO.
• Successful tests of methods to recover tritium fuel that has been absorbed by the interior metal wall of the tokamak. Efficient recovery of tritium is key to the operation and end-of-life decommissioning of fusion machines.
• Verified a heating technique planned for the ITER project to deposit external heating exactly where needed. The demonstration gives confidence in the design and planned operation of the international fusion project ITER.

Record-setting experiments

JET is the only operating fusion machine of the tokamak design that can produce large amounts of fusion reactions, because of its unique capability to operate with the fuel mix deuterium-tritium. This is the high-performance fuel mix planned for the international ITER project and the future European demonstration fusion power plant DEMO.

The second deuterium-tritium experimental campaign (DTE2) at JET in 2021 set a world record of 59 megajoules for the most fusion heat produced in a single shot, which received great public interest when announced in February 2022.

Record DT shot 99971. Credit: EUROfusion consortium

Volker Naulin, Head of the EUROfusion Fusion Science Department, said:

"The DTE2 campaign has been prepared over many years. The scientific results and the energy record achieved at JET in 2021 show that we understand and control fusion plasma under conditions as close to those in future fusion devices as we can get. We predicted and finally showed that we can produce, maintain, and study fusion under high-performance conditions, for as long as the machine allows. This confirms that we are on the right path to fusion energy to the grid."

Ambrogio Fasoli, Director of the Swiss Plasma Center and Programme Manager-elect of EUROfusion, said:

"The JET DTE2 campaign has enriched the formidable knowledge on magnetic fusion that’s provided the basis for the operation of ITER operation. It will also help guide the development of DEMO, which is the backbone device of the European strategy towards fusion power plants. The scientific results included work on plasma conditions and materials compatible with power plants and crucial information for the overall European strategy. They provide a crucial basis for a safe approach to burning plasma in ITER."

Fernanda Rimini, JET Senior Exploitation Manager (UKAEA), said:

"The foundations of the JET success lie in the vision, ambition and exceptional combination of physics and engineering talent of the design team: they produced a device with unique characteristics for the times, namely size and D-T capability, but they also fostered an environment rewarding the dialogue and tight integration between physics and engineering. The tradition of excellence was continued by the JET Team, working over the last 40 years to advance fusion research."

Agata Chomiczewska, national coordinator of research at the JET tokamak, IPPLM, said:

"We are glad that Polish researchers are contributing to the success achieved at the JET tokamak during the DTE2 campaign. The thing about science is that we are constantly discovering something new. There are still many challenges ahead of us, but thanks to our common determination in pursuing the goal, the prospect of commercial fusion power plants becomes real."

40 years of fusion science

JET is the largest and most successful fusion experiment in the world, and a central research facility of the European Fusion Programme. JET is based at the UKAEA campus in Culham, UK and is collectively used by more than 31 European laboratories under the management of the EUROfusion consortium—experts, students, and staff from across Europe, co-funded by the European Commission.

Fusion researchers across Europe and beyond celebrated the 40th anniversary of JET's first plasma shot on Sunday 25 June this year. Since its inception in 1983, JET has been at the forefront of groundbreaking achievements, spearheading the pursuit of safe, low-carbon, and sustainable fusion energy solutions to meet the world's future energy demands.

Over its lifetime, JET has delivered crucial insights into the complex mechanics of fusion, allowing scientists to plan the international fusion experiment ITER and DEMO, the demonstration fusion power plant currently under design by the European fusion community.

JET Torus Hall. Credit: UKAEA courtesy of EUROfusion

Fusion energy’s potential

Fusion, the process that powers stars like our sun, promises a near-limitless clean baseload electricity source for the long term, using small amounts of fuel that can be sourced worldwide from inexpensive materials. The fusion process brings together atoms of light elements like hydrogen at high temperatures to form helium and release tremendous energy as heat. Fusion is inherently safe in that it cannot start a run-away process and produces no long-lived waste.

Source: EUROfusion