One of the popular misconceptions about fusion is that its complex technical requirements are a major drawback for companies to invest and get involved because they would have to wait forever to see any financial return. The best way to deconstruct this cliché is to speak directly to those that have been involved and find out why they have set their eyes on ITER and where is all this leading them. 

What drives F4E contractors forward and keeps them committed to this one-of-a-kind international energy collaboration? Do they see new markets in the horizon that will increase their revenue or have they identified new technological breakthroughs that will help them push forward R&D barriers and establish them as pioneers?
We had the opportunity to meet with some of our contractors and asked them to explain in simple words how they have contributed to ITER and what have been the direct benefits stemming from their participation. 

The interviews brought together representatives of large companies like GDF Suez, managing together with M+W, the biggest contract awarded by F4E for a budget of approximately 500 million EUR. We spoke to Assystem to hear more about their contribution to the Architect Engineer contract, which reached 150 million EUR, and learn more about their strategy in the field of energy beyond Europe’s borders. 

For Apave, ITER has been carrying a business status and has the possibility to open the doors to new markets like India and Russia where they can export their services. Air Liquide Group, elaborated on the fact that their brand and expertise will always be associated with ITER’s cryoplant, which will the biggest in the world. A higher turnover and the recruitment of new staff with expertise in sectors that will generate more profit to AMEC have been reported as direct benefits. The merits of coordination and the collaboration with smaller companies and the possibility of spin-off ventures have been identified by Iberdrola.

Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) like OCEM carrying out specialised work in the area of the Ion Source and Extraction Power Supplies (ISEPs) and SIMIC, in the field of the Toroidal Field Coils, have reported on the business benefits and the skills acquired through their involvement. Laboratories like the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the Jülich Forchungzentrum have explained the type of R&D activities that they have been carrying out with direct application to ITER and its capacity to serve as a meeting point for industry and fusion laboratories. 

To highlight the work that has been carried out behind the scenes in areas like Diagnostics, we have approached National Instruments and Bertin Technologies to hear from them how companies and laboratories can work together and take small steps that will ultimately lead to lead to quantum leaps. Innovation and financial gains underpin the spirit of collaboration.

Listening to the above success stories and thinking of the business opportunities ahead, F4E has decided to develop a clip to explain to potential bidders the different tender procedures with the help of different animated characters. Good soundbites and quick explanations offer an engaging guided tour on what F4E does, where to look for more information, what are the main criteria and procurement procedures and how they are evaluated. The aim is to give potential bidders a quick overview, almost like a teaser, and if they are serious about submitting a tender, direct them to the main info points.

Source: F4E

The conference will be held in Aix en Provence, France, from 18 to 22 May 2015. Authors are invited to submit abstracts before 23rd January 2015 on any of the topics below: 

Tungsten and tungsten alloys; Low-Z materials; Mixed materials; Erosion, redeposition and fuel retention; Materials under extreme thermal loads; Technology and testing of plasma-facing components; Neutron effects in plasma-facing materials.

More information can be found on the website http://irfm.cea.fr/pfmc15

The performance of fusion devices and of a future fusion power plant critically depends on the plasma facing materials and components. Resistance to local heat and particle loads, thermo-mechanical properties, as well as the response to neutron damage of the selected materials are critical parameters which need to be understood and tailored from atomistic to component levels. The 15th International Conference on Plasma-Facing Materials and Components for Fusion Applications addresses these issues.

Source: irfm.cea.fr

Our rapidly industrializing world has an insatiable hunger for energy and conventional sources are struggling to meet demand. Oil is running out, coal is damaging our climate, many nations are abandoning nuclear, yet solar, wind, and water will never be a complete replacement. The solution, says Daniel Clery in this deeply researched and revelatory book, is to be found in the original energy source: the Sun itself. There, at its center, the fusion of 620 million tons of hydrogen every second generates an unfathomable amount of energy. By replicating even a tiny piece of the Sun’s power on Earth, we can secure all the heat and energy we would ever need.

Nuclear fusion scientists have pursued this simple yet extraordinary ambition for decades. Skeptics say it will never work but, as A Piece of the Sun makes clear, large-scale nuclear fusion is scientifically possible—and has many advantages over other options. Fusion is clean, green and virtually limitless and Clery argues passionately and eloquently that the only thing keeping us from proving its worth is our politicians’ shortsightedness. The world energy industry is worth trillions of dollars, divert just a tiny fraction of that into researching fusion and we would soon know if it is workable.

Timely and authoritative, A Piece of the Sun is a rousing call-to-arms to seize this chance of avoiding the looming energy crisis.

Daniel Clery studied theoretical physics at York University, U.K. For more than two decades, he has edited and written for some of the world’s top science magazines, including Physics World, New Scientist and Science. As a news editor for Science magazine since 1993, Clery has covered many of the biggest science news stories of our time.

Source: The Overlook Press

Bernard Bigot, the next director general of ITER, will reform the decentralized structure of the project. 

A multibillion-euro project to build the world's largest nuclear fusion reactor will soon have a new chief. Bernard Bigot, who was nominated to be director general of ITER on 20 November, says he intends to radically reform the management and governance of the troubled project.

Bigot is currently chairman of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, (CEA), and will succeed Japan's Osamu Motojima, who has been director general since July 2010. The current organization of the project has been harshly criticized, and blamed for overruns in the costs of the reactor, and slips in its construction schedule.

Fusion reactors generate energy using the same underlying process as the Sun, by fusing hydrogen nuclei to make helium. A collaboration between the European Union, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States, ITER is designed to show the feasibility of nuclear fusion as a power source on Earth.

The device, which is under construction at a site in St Paul-lez-Durance in southern France, will consist of a doughnut-shaped reactor called a tokamak. The current official cost is at least €13 billion, compared with an initial price tag of €5 billion, but even this later figure is likely an underestimate.

The exact cost is difficult to determine as there is not a single central procurement budget, with member states instead contributing the different parts of the machine in kind, and taking responsibility for procurement of hardware in their own currencies. Once built, the reactor is estimated to cost around €280 million to €530 million a year to operate. 

Ripe for change

At a meeting back in February, the Council agreed to seek management reforms in response to a scathing outside review of the project. The assessment, an executive summary of which was leaked by the New Yorker, described a litany of problems including bureaucracy, the lack of a "project culture" and "unacceptably slow progress".  

In particular, the assessment criticized a "weak leadership team". The next director general "must be an inspirational leader and manager", with "strong, large-scale project management experience", the report said.

Bigot says he will submit an action plan to the ITER Council before the end of January 2015. This will include a proposal to abolish ITER's current, decentralized structure, in which the central ITER Organization is responsible for the design, construction, and operation of the reactor, but has no direct control over each member state's  ITER agencies.

Bigot wants a single, tighter organization with the director general responsible for controlling the entire project, rather like European physics laboratory CERN or a multinational company. "We need global management of ITER," he says.

The proposed changes will not be politically easy, Bigot acknowledges. However, he says that there was support for his plans at an informal meeting with the heads of the domestic ITER agencies.

The time is ripe for change, he adds, because ITER has now moved out of the planning phase and into the construction phase where strong leadership is required more than ever, for example, to impose firm delivery schedules on the member states. 

Serious about reform

After Bigot submits his plan, an  ITER Council meeting is expected to be held in February to approve the action plan, with Bigot being formally appointed immediately after.

Since Osamu Motojima's mandate does not end until July 2015, there will be a "transitional period", says Bigot. This unpredecented early arrival of a new director general is a signal that the Council is serious about accelerating reforms, says one ITER official who requested anonymity.

Bigot believes his past experience will hold him in good stead. He was appointed as chairman of the CEA, an agency of more than 16,000 scientists, engineers and technicians, in 2009, and has been France's High Commissioner for Atomic Energy since 2003. He also has held a variety of other senior positions, including a stint as director-general of research and technology at the French science ministry.

And he has already worked frequently with ITER officials in the member states. "I'm used to speaking with these people and I believe they trust me," he says. Niek Lopes Cardozo, a fusion expert at Eindhoven University of Technology, says that he hold's Bigot "in the highest regard both as a professional and as a person".

Member states had proposed around 10 candidates to the search committee, but it put Bigot forward as its sole choice.

Another ITER official who requested anonymity says that he is confident in Bigot's proposed reforms. "If I would not be optimistic I would not be working in this project, but there is an air of renewed optimism going around at the moment."

Source: Nature