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The team of engineers from F4E, ASG and CNIM, working in Europe’s industrial facility on the ITER site, and their colleagues in ASIPP, the Institute of Plasma Physics of China’s Academy of Sciences, have officially started manufacturing the Poloidal Field (PF) coils assigned to Europe for the biggest fusion device –ITER. ITER will operate with six PF coils. Europe is responsible for five of them and through a collaboration agreement with China one will be fabricated in ASIIP. The remaining coil will be delivered by Russia.

After having successfully completed the winding tests using lengths of dummy conductor, the technicians have started unspooling the “real” conductor and inserted it in the machines to produce the impressive magnetic rings that will control the shape and stability of the super-hot plasma.

In ASIPP, the winding of the first Double Pancake (DP), which consists of two layers of conductors wound in the shape of massive pancakes, started in mid-March and has been completed. Works on the two Helium inlets at the inner joggles, from where Helium will circulate in the conductor to lower its temperature to freezing levels so as to make the coil superconductive, have been concluded. Carefully milling a hole in the jacket, without damaging the superconducting strand underneath, and welding a pipe to feed the helium into the conductor, have been some of the additional delicate works that needed to be performed. This weld has then been X-Rayed and leak tested to ensure that no Helium can escape through the weld. Subsequently, the Helium inlet insulation has then been wrapped around the inlet. On average, the winding of a DP is expected to take 4-5 weeks each.

After a series of rigorous dimensional checks, in order to check whether the shape and dimensions of the component are in compliance, the component will be transferred to the terminal assembly area. The DP will enter its final stage of fabrication by going through Vacuum Pressure Impregnation, where the necessary vacuum will be created to inject the epoxy resin and cure the insulation.

Meanwhile, a few weeks ago in F4E’s PF coils facility, CNIM has already started winding the conductor of the fifth PF coil and the first DP is expected to be completed by the end of May. When the first layers will be completed, the team of technicians will proceed with the installation of the Helium inlets and perform the same steps as in ASIPP.

The good collaboration between F4E, ASIPP and their industrial partners, has been fundamentally important in making good progress in a co-ordinated way. The engineers and technicians supervising the works are witnessing the moment they have all been waiting for: the winding tests are over and the coils are being manufactured for real!

Source: F4E

The first ITER diagnostic components to be supplied by F4E – five Continuous External Rogowski (CER) coils – were delivered to the ITER site earlier this week and  acceptance testing of these items by ITER IO was concluded successfully on 7 March 2017.

The CER coils are to be located outside the ITER vacuum vessel, within the cases of three Toroidal Field (TF) coils. Their purpose is to measure the total electric current flowing in the ITER plasma, a key measurement required for plasma control that also has relevance for safety. By contrast to other common methods of measuring the plasma current, the Rogowski method works with a single sensor, resulting in very high reliability, despite the cryogenic temperatures, high vacuum and mechanical stresses it will be subjected to during operation of the TF coils.

Each CER coil is a flexible, cylindrical structure, measuring approximately 40 metres in length and 12 millimetres in diameter. A special groove will be made in the TF coil cases to house these coils. The ends of the CER coils, emerging from the TF coils, will be housed in protective steel structures that have also been supplied by F4E.  

The CER coils have been manufactured by two companies Axon (France), which supplied the electrical parts of the system, and Sgenia (Spain), which supplied the mechanical parts.

The coils will shortly be transported to Japan by ITER IO, for installation in the TF coils by the Japanese Domestic Agency for ITER, with F4E’s support. Once the TF coils have been installed on the ITER machine, F4E will commission the CER coils for use during first plasma operations.

Source: F4E

The representatives of the nuclear institutions of Kazakhstan who visited ITER on 21st February 2017 stated it simply and clearly: they are very interested in collaborating with ITER. The largest of the Central Asian republics (5.5 times the size of France), Kazakhstan has immense mineral resources and a strong scientific and technological infrastructure inherited from its Soviet past and expanded since the country's independence in 1991.

As of 1 January 2017, Ukraine became part of the EUROfusion consortium. The Ukrainian signatory is the Kharkov Institute for Physics and Technology (KIPT) and it will coordinate the fusion research in seven national universities and research institutes.

Ukrainian fusion infrastructure is currently equipped with stellarators Uragan-2M and Uragan-3M and plasma accelerators QSPA Kh-50 and QSPA-M. The Research Unit includes competences are complementary to those already existing in the EUROfusion consortium. “Ukraine has a particular strong expertise in a number of fields, including plasma facing components, materials, stellarator research and diagnostics,” says EUROfusion Programme Manager Tony Donné.

Head of the Ukrainian Research Unit Igor Garkusha, hopes that with the signing of the EUROfusion agreement Ukrainian researchers will have more participation in JET programmes, as well as in research at other leading fusion facilities in Europe, including the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator. He is also keen on students benefiting from EUROfusion’s Education and Training programmes. “Joining EUROfusion and establishment of Ukrainian Research Unit is an important milestone for our fusion community and we expect further fruitful joint work within EUROfusion Roadmap,” he says.

Source: EUROfusion

The Korean Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) tokamak-type nuclear fusion reactor has achieved a world record of 70 seconds in high-performance plasma operation, South Korea's National Fusion Research Institute (NFRI) has announced. The institute, based at Daejeon, 160 km south of Seoul, said a fully non-inductive operation mode - called a "high poloidal beta scenario" - has been used to achieve this long and steady state of operation using high-power neutral beam. It said various techniques, including a rotating 3D field, have been applied to alleviate the accumulated heat fluxes on the plasma-facing components.

"The world record for high-performance plasma for more than a minute demonstrated that the KSTAR is the forefront in steady-state plasma operation technology in a superconducting device," NFRI said in a statement today. "This is a huge step forward for realization of the fusion reactor."

In addition, the institute said, KSTAR researchers also succeeded in achieving an alternative advanced plasma operation mode with the internal transport barrier (ITB). This is a steep pressure gradient in the core of the plasmas due to the enhanced core plasma confinement. NFRI said this is the first ITB operation achieved in the superconducting device at the lowest heating power.

"With the progress of the Iter project, the KSTAR research will focus on the mission essential for the fusion reactor beyond Iter," the institute said. "They are new efficient mode of operation and a new divertor concept suitable for the Korean fusion demonstration reactor, the K-DEMO device, which will be the first runner in worldwide fusion energy development plan."

NFRI president Keeman Kim said, "We will exert efforts for KSTAR to continuously produce world-class results, and to promote international joint reearch among nuclear fusion researchers."

Construction of KSTAR, a tokamak-typed nuclear fusion reactor, began in December 1995 and it was completed in August 2007. The first experiment was conducted in KSTAR in 2009. It was the first in the world to feature a fully superconducting magnet system with a central solenoid, toroidal and poloidal field coils. It measures 8.6 m high, and 8.8 m in diameter.

Tokomak-design reactors like KSTAR use magnetism to contain a toroidal-shaped plasma at temperatures of up to 300 million °C. Despite this temperature it is necessary to cool superconducting magnets to -269°C. Inside the plasma, a few grams of deuterium and tritium atoms are stripped to the nuclei, which fuse to release energy. It is hoped that this form of nuclear energy could one day be used to generate electricity, but maintaining a steady plasma has proven very difficult.

Source: World Nuclear News