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News & Media

Latest °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¸ßÊÖ Newsline

  • Fusion supply chain | A glimpse into the future for commercial fusion reactors

    Most of the USD 7 billion in investment in private fusion initiatives has gone to companies that are building devices from the ground up. But recently, another [...]

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  • Image of the week | °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¸ßÊÖ Director-General visits Russia

    The °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¸ßÊÖ Director-General was in Russia last week, meeting with stakeholders and holding technical meetings with colleagues in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. As [...]

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  • Image of the Week | Sector 5 is on its way

    The first vacuum vessel sector produced in Europe travelled last week between Monfalcone, Italy, and the French port of Fos-sur-Mer. The 440-tonne component had [...]

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  • Anniversary | °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¸ßÊÖ Document Management system turns 20

    Whatever its nature, every large project generates huge numbers of documents. And when project collaborators operate from different countries, as was the case f [...]

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Of Interest

See archived entries

Merry plasmas!

On 14 December, at 6:03 p.m., a flash of light illuminated the vacuum vessel of WEST, the rejuvenated Tore Supra tokamak designed to serve as a test bench for °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¸ßÊÖ.

Operational since 1988, the CEA-Euratom tokamak Tore Supra underwent a major transformation and became WEST (W Environment in Steady-state Tokamak), a test bench for °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¸ßÊÖ. The machine produced its first plasma on 14 December. (Click to view larger version...)
Operational since 1988, the CEA-Euratom tokamak Tore Supra underwent a major transformation and became WEST (W Environment in Steady-state Tokamak), a test bench for °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¸ßÊÖ. The machine produced its first plasma on 14 December.
This  rewarded four years of hard work that involved stripping out the 30-year-old machine, adding magnetic coils to confine the originally circular plasma into a "D shape," and trading its carbon-carbon fibre (CFC) "limiter" for an °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¸ßÊÖ-like tungsten divertor.

Operators at the French Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research (IRFM) are now confident that they can move forward to the first experimental campaign, set to be launched in March 2017. The first phase of the campaign will explore heat load patterns and H mode transition; the second in October-December 2017 will focus on testing plasma-facing components under the high heat loads of °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¸ßÊÖ-grade plasmas.

On that very same day, Korea's National Fusion Research Institute (NFRI) announced that the KSTAR tokamak had achieved a record 70-second H-mode plasma. (Click to view larger version...)
On that very same day, Korea's National Fusion Research Institute (NFRI) announced that the KSTAR tokamak had achieved a record 70-second H-mode plasma.
On the very same day that the IRFM team was (discreetly) celebrating WEST's first plasma, another team, at the other end of the world, also had an achievement to announce: a record 70-second H-mode plasma had just been  by the Korean superconducting tokamak KSTAR.

One month earlier, in mid-November, the Chinese tokamak EAST had  a similar but slightly shorter 60-second steady-state high energy plasma.

Read more about WEST .


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