ºÚÁÏרÇø

​The DOE Advanced Scientific Computing Research () program has awarded 809 million supercomputing core-hours to 13 new projects at Argonne to pursue "high-risk, high-payoff" simulation research in energy-mission areas and national emergency mitigation. The awards will spur research into areas including fusion energy, aqueous ion batteries, fuel cell science, earth-system models, jet engine design, and solar energy.

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​A key issue for the development of fusion energy to generate electricity is the ability to confine the superhot, charged plasma gas that fuels fusion reactions in magnetic devices called tokamaks. This gas is subject to instabilities that cause it to leak from the magnetic fields and halt fusion reactions.

Now a recently developed imaging technique can help researchers improve their control of instabilities. The new technique, developed by physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), the University of California-Davis and General Atomics in San Diego, provides new insight into how the instabilities respond to externally applied magnetic fields.

This technique, called Electron Cyclotron Emission Imaging (ECEI) and successfully tested on the DIII-D tokamak at General Atomics, uses an array of detectors to produce a 2D profile of fluctuating electron temperatures within the plasma.

Read more at .

Image credit: Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion

​Get an exclusive sample of the actual tokamak fusion sound .

​A new educational currency in the world of fusion becomes available this month with the launch of European Fusion Masters and Doctorate Certificates. The certificates are awarded by FuseNet, Europe's fusion education network, to recognize students with a high level of specialization in fusion, says Professor Niek Lopes Cardozo, chair of FuseNet: "Fusion is an exciting, interdisciplinary field. Our students [are] a group with special qualities and we want to recognize that. 'Fusion' is a quality brand; the certificate is a quality stamp."

The launch comes at a time when there is growing discussion of the preparation of Generation ºÚÁÏרÇø. Writing in Science magazine, journalist Dan Clery drew attention to an "awkward gap" for fusion personnel that could eventuate between JET and ºÚÁÏרÇø, and it is precisely this issue that FuseNet's new certification addresses.

"FuseNet plays an important role in preparing the ºÚÁÏרÇø generation," says Duarte Borba, senior advisor to the EFDA leader. "A new generation of scientists and engineers are needed to operate ºÚÁÏרÇø and to develop the science and technology required to build a fusion power plant."   Read more on website.

Professor Miklos Porkolab, director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at MIT and professor in the MIT's Department of Physics, received the 2013 Hannes Alfvén Prize at a ceremony held in Espoo (Helsinki), Finland on 1 July.   The honour, given annually by the European Physical Society (EPS) during their Conference on Plasma Physics, recognizes outstanding work in the field of plasma science and fusion research.   Porkolab was cited "for his seminal contributions to the physics of plasma waves and his key role in the development of fusion energy."   Read more

The South Korean government reports that it will invest 151.6 billion won (EUR 103 million) in R&D for nuclear fusion this year.

 

The government will allocate 84.2 billion won in the ºÚÁÏרÇø project, 32.7 billion won in research by the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR), 26.8 billion won in the nuclear fusion research institutions' projects, and 7.9 billion won in conducting basic nuclear fusion research and fostering personnel. The total budget is down 12 percent from that of last year.   The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP) said last week: "We intend to continue to develop and produce 10 major devices such as diagnosis machines, and at the same time develop key technologies required for commercializing nuclear fusion energy in the future."
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A €400bn plan to power Europe using solar panels in North African deserts has been thrown into disarray after the non-profit foundation behind the original idea parted ways with the strategic arm set up to help deliver the ambitious project.   The Desertec Foundation today announced it will terminate its membership of Dii GmbH, which was established in 2009 to develop a rollout plan through to 2050 for the project, including work to identify sources of finance and developing a framework for investment.   Read more at:

In the last week, two news stories really captured the potential future for nuclear energy.  In The New York Times, Matthew Wald reported from Georgia, where construction crews are slowly building the first two new nuclear reactors in thirty years.   And National Geographic's Will Ferguson reported from Tennessee that engineers and scientists are taking core samples and mapping regional geology as part of the early planning stages of building the first small modular nuclear reactor in the world.   Both projects face unique challenges, yet they both represent the beginning of two potential nuclear paths for reducing climate-warming carbon emissions in the United States (and potentially the world).   Read more at:

Billions have already been spent on fusion since the first experimental base opened in the former Soviet Union in the 1960s. Billions more is about to be spent on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in France, which is due to come into full operation in 2023. The aim of all this expenditure is to achieve the ultimate breakthrough — to create cheap energy from an environmentally-friendly and relatively stable source that will help to combat climate change while driving economic growth and improving Europe's competitiveness.   Read more

A rare state of matter dubbed "nuclear pasta" appears to exist only inside ultra-dense objects called neutron stars, astronomers say.   There, the nuclei of atoms get crammed together so tightly that they arrange themselves in patterns akin to pasta shapes — some in flat sheets like lasagna and others in spirals like fusilli. And these formations are likely responsible for limiting the maximum rotation speed of these stars, according to a new study.   "Such conditions are only reached in neutron stars, the most dense objects in the universe besides black holes," said astronomer José Pons of Alicante University in Spain.   Read more in the Huffington Post

In the last week, two news stories really captured the potential future for nuclear energy. The New York Times' Matthew Wald reported from Georgia, where construction crews are slowly building the first two new nuclear reactors in thirty years. And National Geographic's Will Ferguson reported from Tennessee that engineers and scientists are taking core samples and mapping regional geology as part of the early planning stages of building the first small modular nuclear reactor in the world.

Both projects face unique challenges, yet they both represent the beginning of two potential nuclear paths for reducing climate-warming carbon emissions in the United States (and potentially the world).

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The 'hybrid' scenario is an attractive operating scenario for ºÚÁÏרÇø since it combines long plasma duration with the reliability of the reference H-mode regime. We review the recent European modelling effort carried out within the Integrated Scenario Modelling group which aims at (i) understanding the underlying physics of the hybrid regime in ASDEX-Upgrade and JET and (ii) extrapolating them towards ºÚÁÏרÇø. JET and ASDEX-Upgrade hybrid scenarios performed under different experimental conditions have been simulated in an interpretative and predictive way in order to address the current profile dynamics and its link with core confinement, the relative importance of magnetic shear, s, and E × B flow shear on the core turbulence, pedestal stability and H—L transition.   Read more here:

US Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana visited the Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) on 14 June to learn about fusion research at MIT and the plight of MIT's tokamak, Alcator C-Mod.

That same day, PSFC Director Miklos Porkolab received a letter from the Department of Energy (DOE) informing him that its previous request for a "cold shutdown" of the C-Mod experimental facility be changed to a "warm shutdown" for the duration of fiscal year 2013. The change was in response to guidance DOE received from the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development as part of its fiscal year 2013 budget "reprogramming" activity.

The Center is exploring how best to prepare for retaining essential staff through the remainder of fiscal year 2013, with the prospect of possibly restarting operation of the fusion experiment in fiscal year 2014, should funds be appropriated by Congress.

Something of a sad moment for infrared astronomy has come with the death of the European Space Agency's powerful space telescope Herschel.   Vital helium coolant has already run out. And when its thrusters' fuel tanks are finally exhausted on Monday, the giant eye on the sky will be switched off for ever.   But the work of the hugely successful instrument, with its 3.5 metre mirror, nearly 2 million km from Earth in the depths of space, continue to bring exciting discoveries.   The latest to be revealed is that the amount of cool hydrogen gas within our Milky Way galaxy that forms a reservoir that will fuel new stars has been hugely underestimated.   Read more on Space News web site at:

A power outage could leave Western nations without electricity for months in the event of a strong geomagnetic storm, a new report claims, adding that it is "almost inevitable in the future" while the sun is approaching the peak of its solar cycle.   It is a known fact that solar activity is interconnected with the our planet's geomagnetic fields that are known to affect life on Earth, including widespread electrical disruptions.  Currently the Sun's activity is ramping up toward what is known as solar maximum as the peak of the 11-year solar cycle is expected in 2015.   According to the report, produced by Lloyd's in cooperation with Atmospheric and Environmental research (AER), super solar storms normally occur approximately every 150 years, the last being the Carrington Event in 1859—a geomagnetic storm that caused disruptions in telegraph lines all over the world and the brightest auroras. However that was long before people were so dependent on electricity.   Read more on RT's web site at:

They seek one day to harness the same energy that powers the stars and thus to open the door to deep space exploration. Among the first goals of a spacecraft with such an engine would most possibly be human travel to Mars.   "Using existing rocket fuels, it's nearly impossible for humans to explore much beyond Earth," said lead researcher John Slough, a University of Washington research associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics. "We are hoping to give us a much more powerful source of energy in space that could eventually lead to making interplanetary travel commonplace."   The project is funded through NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts Program. Last month at a symposium, Slough and his team from MSNW, of which he is president, presented their mission analysis for a trip to Mars, along with detailed computer modeling and initial experimental results. Theirs was one of a handful of projects awarded a second round of funding last fall after already receiving phase-one money in a field of 15 projects chosen from more than 700 proposals.   Read more on the Daily Fusion website at: #

It sounds like a kind of gothic torture—being put in a large bucket and lowered into a 9m-deep hole at the centre of a huge machine. But it's all in a day's work for JET's inspection team as part of maintenance of JET's central magnet, the P1 solenoid.

The solenoid itself is made up of 1,440 turns of copper, separated into 14 "pancakes"—sections of coils stacked on top of each other. During the course of experiments these carry up to 60,000 amps and are subjected to huge magnetic forces, which cause them to shift around slightly. A set of spring-loaded keys pull the pancakes back into alignment, but over the course of thousands of plasma pulses you would expect these to wear and lose their precision.

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Warning that the world is not on track to limit the global temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius, the International Energy Agency (IEA) on 10 June urged governments to swiftly enact four energy policies that would keep climate goals alive without harming economic growth.
 
"Climate change has quite frankly slipped to the back burner of policy priorities. But the problem is not going away—quite the opposite," IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven said in London at the launch of a World Energy Outlook Special Report, Redrawing the Energy-Climate Map, which highlights the need for intensive action before 2020.   Read the full article here:  

JET turns 30 this year, but its smaller cousin Tore Supra, in France, is close behind, celebrating its 25th anniversary this month. Tore Supra was conceived even before JET's construction was complete with a view to surpassing JET's performance in specific areas—for example, pulse length. And 25 years on, Tore Supra continues to look forward, with big plans to line it with tungsten (atomic symbol W) and install a divertor in the WEST (W Environment in a Steady-state Tokamak) Project.   The great leap forward that Tore Supra incorporated was superconducting magnets. This enabled a much longer pulse length; indeed Tore Supra set the record for the longest pulse in a large tokamak (six minutes) in 2003. While this is an achievement in itself, it also provides a vital tool for testing materials in a sustained plasma discharge. In particular, Tore Supra has been instrumental in exploring the active cooling of materials that face the plasma. Although it turned out that building a water-cooling system robust enough to weather the harsh environment of a tokamak has been a challenge, the knowledge gained will be vital for the long pulses of ºÚÁÏרÇø.   Read more on EFDA's website at: . 

The swan song of retiring Sandia physicist Tom Sanford is a technical, yet personal, memoir about experiments that changed the course of research at particle accelerators around the world.   His experiments in the mid-1990s made the Z accelerator a more effective candidate to achieve peacetime fusion energy—a goal still pursued by Z researchers today. Z also tests materials by subjecting them to the almost unimaginable conditions present in stars and nuclear weapons.   Sanford went on to share the 2005 Hannes Alfven Prize of the European Physical Society "for the remarkable achievements of the multi-filament Z-pinch development of recent years."   Read more at: