Nuclear Fusion Basics

Signing of a Cooperation Agreement between the IAEA and ITER Organization. In the photo, Yury Sokolov, Deputy Director General of the IAEA (left), and Kaname Ikeda, Director General of the ITER Organization (right). (22nd IAEA Fusion Energy Conference, Geneva, Switzerland, 13 October 2008).

Fusion, a form of nuclear energy generated when light-weight atoms fuse, is the process at work in every star's core, releasing an enormous amount of energy. Researchers have been trying to harness fusion and reproduce it on earth in a controlled manner. If they succeed, they will provide the world a safe, sustainable, environmentally responsible and abundant source of energy.

For decades, the scientific community has been pursuing nuclear fusion, yet now research has reached a critical stage, as scientists are building an experimental reactor that one day may demonstrate that fusion can be used commercially to create electrical power.

What is Fusion?
For more than 50 years, energy has been generated in nuclear power plants through fission, a process in which heavy elements such as uranium are bombarded by neutrons releasing heat in the process.

Nuclear fusion, on the other hand, is based on the opposite principle. In fusion reactors, light atomic nuclei are compressed under intense pressure and heat to form heavier ones and release energy in the process. The process must be optimized to generate more energy than it consumes. With a sufficiently large and sustainable energy 'profit', fusion could be utilized to generate electricity commercially.

The main fuels used in nuclear fusion are deuterium and tritium, both heavy isotopes of hydrogen. Deuterium constitutes a tiny fraction of natural hydrogen, only 0,0153%, and can be extracted inexpensively from seawater. Tritium can be made from lithium, which is also abundant in nature.

The amount of deuterium present in one litre of water can in theory produce as much energy as the combustion of 300 litres of oil. This means that there is enough deuterium in the oceans to meet human energy needs for millions of years.

Ways to Fusion
Building a fusion power plant that can withstand the immense temperature and pressures this process produces is one of the century's greatest engineering challenges. The fuel, made up of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, must be heated to about 100 million degrees centigrade. At that hotter-than-the-sun temperature, a fully ionized gas-plasma is formed. The plasma will then be ignited to create fusion. At present, scientists are pursuing two methods for achieving nuclear fusion: inertial and magnetic confinement.

In inertial confinement systems, ion beams or laser beams are used to compress a pea-sized deuterium-tritium fuel pellet to extremely high densities. When a critical point is reached, the pellet is ignited through shock wave heating.

Fusion power plants using this technique would ignite fuel pellets several times per second. The resulting heat is then used to generate steam that powers electricity-generating turbines.

In magnetic confinement systems, electromagnets are used to contain the plasma fuel. One of the most promising options, the tokamak device, contains the plasma in a doughnut-shaped chamber. A powerful electric current is induced in the plasma, resulting in an increase in temperature. The plasma is also heated by auxiliary systems such as microwaves, radiowaves or accelerated particles. In the process, temperatures of several hundred million degrees centigrade are achieved.

Benefits for Mankind
The potential advantages of nuclear fusion energy are manifold, as it represents a long-term, sustainable, economic and safe energy source for electricity generation.

Fuel is inexpensive and abundant in nature, while the amount of long-lived radioactive waste and greenhouse gases produced through fusion are minimal.

While research on nuclear fusion continues, many spin-offs relating to plasma physics and fusion technology are already benefiting society. These include improvements in materials research, such as ceramic, metals and coatings, and industrial processes such as welding and waste removal.

By Giovanni Verlini, IAEA Division of Public Information.

View the original article here

A Fusion Facilitator

Yury Sokolov, Deputy Director General of the IAEA

How does the IAEA currently support fusion research?

The IAEA?s financial and human resource investment in fusion research is vanishingly small in comparison with the sums and staffing that countries involved in fusion around the world dedicate to that effort. Nonetheless, nuclear fusion has been an important focus of the IAEA?s activities from the inception of international fusion activities, which began 52 years ago at the so-called ?Second Geneva Conference?, a UN conference on the peaceful use of atomic energy. In addition, since October, 1960, the IAEA has been publishing the journal Nuclear Fusion, which is now published online to deliver information to the fusion community as swiftly as possible.

Our contribution also includes hosting a unique consultative body, comprising outstanding fusion scientists from different countries, the International Fusion Research Council, which advises the IAEA Director General on all questions related to fusion and plasma physics research. This Council is the forum where national and international activities are coordinated, such as organizing the 23rd IAEA Fusion Energy Conference, being held from 11 ? 15 October in Daejeon, the Republic of Korea.

It has always been obvious that the IAEA could not command the funds needed to promote the use of nuclear power by building demonstration or power reactors. The Agency?s role is to encourage the exchange of scientific and technical information on research in nuclear technology, provide advice, promote training, evaluate nuclear projects and carry out feasibility studies.

Even without direct involvement in projects, the IAEA can play a very important role. ITER, the international organization building an experimental fusion reactor, is a good example of how the Agency plays a key role as a mediator on many crucial occasions during ITER?s evolution from an idea to an international agreement and through its maturity and autonomy as an independent organization. The IAEA assisted in consolidating the international fusion community, focusing its plasma physics research on the problems of the ITER design, making this research more results-oriented and very effectively encouraging worldwide investment in fusion. ITER is a hugely visible example of how large international projects can be organized and how the IAEA can position itself in such projects.

In addition, the IAEA offers a forum for medium and small-scale projects within the framework of its ?Coordinated Research Projects?. And quite often, it is the smallest projects that can influence fusion research significantly.

Looking ahead, the IAEA can help the international fusion community take the next steps, in the same manner as it facilitated ITER?s development. We will, for instance, gather the best human resources for future work, coordinate fusion and fission studies of technological issues relevant to both programmes, assist and collaborate in the education and training of future generations of young scientists and engineers, produce joint publications and organize scientific conferences.

An enormous investment is necessary to achieve fusion even on a test basis. Given all of the problems the world faces, is fusion worth the investment?

An investment in fusion is not wasted money. I think that the industrial spin-offs from fusion technology such as using plasma to harden material surfaces, for welding and cutting materials, to advance vacuum technologies, to develop materials capable of withstanding high energy fluxes, and to develop industrial technology for superconductor production, to name a few, have all yielded a return on all investments. It is possible to indicate an enormous number of examples when cutting edge scientific research boosts innovative applications.

ITER is the fusion community?s main path forward at the moment. The experimental reactor will be capable of producing a self-sustaining fusion reaction and demonstrating the integrated operation of the technologies essential for a fusion power plant, including handling the plasma energy flow in the divertor, testing the tritium breeding modules and steady state plasma control. Its operation is an important stage in nuclear fusion research. ITER will drive the next stage in the peaceful use of nuclear fusion energy: a demonstration power plant based on magnetic confinement. As a part of a broad strategy to achieve the goal of producing electricity using fusion energy, it was agreed to initiate activities for the development of an economical demonstration of fusion through development of a ?DEMOnstration Power Plant? or DEMO reactor.

It is clear that additional approaches need also to be explored to find the optimal solution to the problem of bringing the Sun?s power to Earth. Alternative magnetic concepts and inertial fusion concepts are under investigation such as National Ignition Facility (NIF), the Laser Megajoule Project (LMJ), the FIREX (I and II) and Hiper project.

Fusion promises to offer a source of limitless, clean energy. What are the major challenges to be overcome in achieving commercially viable energy production using fusion?

There is no debate that fusion has the potential to produce a significant amount of energy for thousands of years. The challenge is how to make the process practical, economical, reliable and sustainable. All current fusion research is aiming to achieve that goal. And by achieving it, we will not only have energy, we will gain new structural materials, superconductors, reliable robots, new methods and tools for control and analysis, and so on.

And as a joke, let me say that we have to overcome the challenges created by impatient expectations and untimely disappointment.

When do you expect to see the first test reactor (ITER) in operation?.

The ITER schedule assumes that its first plasma will be produced in 2019.

View the original article here

Experts Meet for Largest Ever IAEA Fusion Conference

The ITER Tokamak will be nearly 30 metres tall, and weigh 23 000 tons. The Tokamak is a doughnut-shaped vessel surrounded by coils that produce an intense magnetic field ? in which the conditions needed for fusion are created and maintained.

More than 1000 scientific experts met for the six-day, IAEA Fusion Energy Conference, held in Daejeon, the Republic of Korea from 11-16 October 2010. Hosted by Korea's National Fusion Research Institute, this meeting was the largest gathering the IAEA has organized on the means to use fusion as a source of energy since the Conference series began in 1961.

As the search for greener forms of electricity production intensifies, the rising attendance and the scope of the research presented at the Conference are indicative of the scientific community's growing attention to pursuing peaceful nuclear fusion. During the Conference, scientists provided 460 poster presentations, delivered over 80 lectures, in addition to more than 20 overview presentations, as well as an additional 7 overview posters, displaying the outcome of the work done by larger groups, often over a period of many years. The Youth Conference on Fusion Energy was held prior to the Conference and was attended by about 100 young researchers. This new Conference was organized by the National Fusion Research Institute in cooperation with the IAEA.

"For the world at large, fusion energy remains a distant dream but the large group of distinguished scientists gathering in Deajeon recently made important headway to move the dream closer to reality," said Werner Burkart, Head of the IAEA's Nuclear Sciences and Applications Department, who opened the Conference on behalf of IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano.

The next Fusion Energy Conference will be held in San Diego, USA from 8 to 13 October 2012.

See Story Resources for more information.

View the original article here

Facilitating Fusion Research

Caption: An artist's depiction of a giant solar flare on the red dwarf star EV Lacertae. Fusion is the process that powers the stars. Credit: Casey Reed/NASA

IAEA has always played an important role in facilitating safe and environmentally responsible nuclear energy sources.

A year after the IAEA was founded, it supported the first fusion conference in 1958. Later, in 1972 the International Fusion Research Council (IFRC) was created to provide the IAEA Director General expert advice to help steer the Agency?s controlled nuclear fusion programme and to promote international cooperation in this field.

Commercial fusion reactors are yet a theoretical possiblity. To help overcome the challenges presented in demonstrating the technological and commercial feasibility of generating electricity using fusion power, the IAEA has been collaborating with the international fusion community, and in particular with researchers at the ITER organization. ITER's partners and experts are building the world?s first international demonstration reactor for fusion power in Cadarache, France.

The IAEA has been closely involved with ITER since its inception in 1985. At that time, during the US/USSR Summit, held in Geneva in November 1985, USSR General Secretary Gorbachev proposed to U.S. President Reagan an international project aimed at developing fusion energy for peaceful purposes. This agreement lead to the establishment of the ITER project and an international agreement. The initial signatories were the former Soviet Union, the USA, the European Union and Japan. In 2003, the People's Republic of China and the Republic of Korea joined the partnership, followed by India in 2005. Together, these seven nations represent over half of the world's population. Eleven years after the Gorbachev-Reagan summit, the ITER International Fusion Energy Organization for the Joint Implementation of the ITER Project was established in November 2006. The IAEA's Director General is the Agreement's depositary.

In October 2008, ITER and the IAEA signed a cooperative agreement to exchange research information on the study and potential application of fusion energy, participate in each other?s meetings and organise joint scientific conferences. The agreement also includes plans for cooperation on training, publications, plasma physics and modelling, and fusion safety and security. In addition to cooperating with ITER, the IAEA's fusion programme focuses on increasing international cooperation and support for science and technology for fusion power.

Knowledge management and dissemination in fusion research are also strategic priorities for the IAEA. For instance, the Agency has published the monthly scientific journal Nuclear Fusion for half a century. Nuclear Fusion and related publications, the World Survey of Activities in Controlled Fusion Research, the International Bulletin on Atomic and Molecular Data for Fusion and the Atomic and Plasma-Material Interaction Data for Fusion are considered journals of record and are distributed to hundreds of institutions and researchers among Agency Member States.

The Agency also maintains nuclear data libraries, such as the Fusion Evaluated Nuclear Data Library, atomic and molecular data, and plasma-material interaction data that are relevant to fusion research. The data can be accessed via Internet on IAEA?s Nuclear Data Information System (NDIS, http://www-nds.iaea.org/ndisintro.htm) and the Atomic and Molecular Data Information System (AMDIS, http://www-amdis.iaea.org/publications/bulletin.php).

For over fifty years, the IAEA has drawn together the world's leading fusion researchers to help find ways to utilize fusion's potential for delivering clean, sustainable and abundant energy by the biennial Fusion Energy Conference. The 2010 conference takes place in Daejeon, the Republic of Korea. It assembles more physicists than ever before. The six-day conference began on 11 October and is hosted by Korea?s National Fusion Research Institute.

View the original article here

Nuclear Fusion Prize Winners

Left-hand photo: John E Rice (centre), MIT, the Winner of the 2010 Nuclear Fusion journal Award receives the award certificate and trophy from the Chair of the Board of Editors of Nuclear Fusion, Mitsuru Kikuchi (left), Japan Atomic Energy Agency and Werner Burkart (right), Deputy Director General, IAEA

Right-hand photo: Steven Sabbagh, Columbia University / PPPL (centre), the Winner of the 2009 Nuclear Fusion journal Award receives the award certificate and trophy from the Chair of the Board of Editors of Nuclear Fusion, Mitsuru Kikuchi (left), Japan Atomic Energy Agency and Werner Burkart (right), Deputy Director General, IAEA

The Nuclear Fusion Prize Nuclear Fusion journal website

During the 2010 Fusion Energy Conference, held in Daejeon, Republic of Korea, the Nuclear Fusion Prize was presented to the 2009 and 2010 winners on 11 October 2010.

The Prize Winner for 2009 winner is Steve Sabbagh from the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Columbia University, New York. He received the award as the lead author of a landmark paper which reports record parameters of beta in a large spherical torus plasma and presents a thorough investigation of the physics of Resistive Wall Mode (RWM) instability. The paper makes a significant contribution to the critical topic of RWM stabilization.

The recipient of the 2010 award is John Rice, Principal Research Scientist, on the Alcator Project at MIT?s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, Cambridge, as the lead author of a seminal paper that analyzes results across a range of machines in order to develop a universal scaling that can be used to predict intrinsic rotation. The timeliness of this paper is the anticipated applicability of this scaling to ITER.

Background The Nuclear Fusion Prize is awarded annually to recognise outstanding work published in the journal.

Each year, a shortlist of ten papers is nominated for the Nuclear Fusion prize. These are papers of the highest scientific standard, published in the journal volume from two years previous to the award year. Nominations are based on citation record and recommendation by the Board of Editors. The Board then votes by secret ballot to determine which of these papers has made the largest scientific impact.

View the original article here

Nuclear Fusion Basics

Signing of a Cooperation Agreement between the IAEA and ITER Organization. In the photo, Yury Sokolov, Deputy Director General of the IAEA (left), and Kaname Ikeda, Director General of the ITER Organization (right). (22nd IAEA Fusion Energy Conference, Geneva, Switzerland, 13 October 2008).

Fusion, a form of nuclear energy generated when light-weight atoms fuse, is the process at work in every star's core, releasing an enormous amount of energy. Researchers have been trying to harness fusion and reproduce it on earth in a controlled manner. If they succeed, they will provide the world a safe, sustainable, environmentally responsible and abundant source of energy.

For decades, the scientific community has been pursuing nuclear fusion, yet now research has reached a critical stage, as scientists are building an experimental reactor that one day may demonstrate that fusion can be used commercially to create electrical power.

What is Fusion?
For more than 50 years, energy has been generated in nuclear power plants through fission, a process in which heavy elements such as uranium are bombarded by neutrons releasing heat in the process.

Nuclear fusion, on the other hand, is based on the opposite principle. In fusion reactors, light atomic nuclei are compressed under intense pressure and heat to form heavier ones and release energy in the process. The process must be optimized to generate more energy than it consumes. With a sufficiently large and sustainable energy 'profit', fusion could be utilized to generate electricity commercially.

The main fuels used in nuclear fusion are deuterium and tritium, both heavy isotopes of hydrogen. Deuterium constitutes a tiny fraction of natural hydrogen, only 0,0153%, and can be extracted inexpensively from seawater. Tritium can be made from lithium, which is also abundant in nature.

The amount of deuterium present in one litre of water can in theory produce as much energy as the combustion of 300 litres of oil. This means that there is enough deuterium in the oceans to meet human energy needs for millions of years.

Ways to Fusion
Building a fusion power plant that can withstand the immense temperature and pressures this process produces is one of the century's greatest engineering challenges. The fuel, made up of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, must be heated to about 100 million degrees centigrade. At that hotter-than-the-sun temperature, a fully ionized gas-plasma is formed. The plasma will then be ignited to create fusion. At present, scientists are pursuing two methods for achieving nuclear fusion: inertial and magnetic confinement.

In inertial confinement systems, ion beams or laser beams are used to compress a pea-sized deuterium-tritium fuel pellet to extremely high densities. When a critical point is reached, the pellet is ignited through shock wave heating.

Fusion power plants using this technique would ignite fuel pellets several times per second. The resulting heat is then used to generate steam that powers electricity-generating turbines.

In magnetic confinement systems, electromagnets are used to contain the plasma fuel. One of the most promising options, the tokamak device, contains the plasma in a doughnut-shaped chamber. A powerful electric current is induced in the plasma, resulting in an increase in temperature. The plasma is also heated by auxiliary systems such as microwaves, radiowaves or accelerated particles. In the process, temperatures of several hundred million degrees centigrade are achieved.

Benefits for Mankind
The potential advantages of nuclear fusion energy are manifold, as it represents a long-term, sustainable, economic and safe energy source for electricity generation.

Fuel is inexpensive and abundant in nature, while the amount of long-lived radioactive waste and greenhouse gases produced through fusion are minimal.

While research on nuclear fusion continues, many spin-offs relating to plasma physics and fusion technology are already benefiting society. These include improvements in materials research, such as ceramic, metals and coatings, and industrial processes such as welding and waste removal.

By Giovanni Verlini, IAEA Division of Public Information.

View the original article here

A Fusion Facilitator

Yury Sokolov, Deputy Director General of the IAEA

How does the IAEA currently support fusion research?

The IAEA?s financial and human resource investment in fusion research is vanishingly small in comparison with the sums and staffing that countries involved in fusion around the world dedicate to that effort. Nonetheless, nuclear fusion has been an important focus of the IAEA?s activities from the inception of international fusion activities, which began 52 years ago at the so-called ?Second Geneva Conference?, a UN conference on the peaceful use of atomic energy. In addition, since October, 1960, the IAEA has been publishing the journal Nuclear Fusion, which is now published online to deliver information to the fusion community as swiftly as possible.

Our contribution also includes hosting a unique consultative body, comprising outstanding fusion scientists from different countries, the International Fusion Research Council, which advises the IAEA Director General on all questions related to fusion and plasma physics research. This Council is the forum where national and international activities are coordinated, such as organizing the 23rd IAEA Fusion Energy Conference, being held from 11 ? 15 October in Daejeon, the Republic of Korea.

It has always been obvious that the IAEA could not command the funds needed to promote the use of nuclear power by building demonstration or power reactors. The Agency?s role is to encourage the exchange of scientific and technical information on research in nuclear technology, provide advice, promote training, evaluate nuclear projects and carry out feasibility studies.

Even without direct involvement in projects, the IAEA can play a very important role. ITER, the international organization building an experimental fusion reactor, is a good example of how the Agency plays a key role as a mediator on many crucial occasions during ITER?s evolution from an idea to an international agreement and through its maturity and autonomy as an independent organization. The IAEA assisted in consolidating the international fusion community, focusing its plasma physics research on the problems of the ITER design, making this research more results-oriented and very effectively encouraging worldwide investment in fusion. ITER is a hugely visible example of how large international projects can be organized and how the IAEA can position itself in such projects.

In addition, the IAEA offers a forum for medium and small-scale projects within the framework of its ?Coordinated Research Projects?. And quite often, it is the smallest projects that can influence fusion research significantly.

Looking ahead, the IAEA can help the international fusion community take the next steps, in the same manner as it facilitated ITER?s development. We will, for instance, gather the best human resources for future work, coordinate fusion and fission studies of technological issues relevant to both programmes, assist and collaborate in the education and training of future generations of young scientists and engineers, produce joint publications and organize scientific conferences.

An enormous investment is necessary to achieve fusion even on a test basis. Given all of the problems the world faces, is fusion worth the investment?

An investment in fusion is not wasted money. I think that the industrial spin-offs from fusion technology such as using plasma to harden material surfaces, for welding and cutting materials, to advance vacuum technologies, to develop materials capable of withstanding high energy fluxes, and to develop industrial technology for superconductor production, to name a few, have all yielded a return on all investments. It is possible to indicate an enormous number of examples when cutting edge scientific research boosts innovative applications.

ITER is the fusion community?s main path forward at the moment. The experimental reactor will be capable of producing a self-sustaining fusion reaction and demonstrating the integrated operation of the technologies essential for a fusion power plant, including handling the plasma energy flow in the divertor, testing the tritium breeding modules and steady state plasma control. Its operation is an important stage in nuclear fusion research. ITER will drive the next stage in the peaceful use of nuclear fusion energy: a demonstration power plant based on magnetic confinement. As a part of a broad strategy to achieve the goal of producing electricity using fusion energy, it was agreed to initiate activities for the development of an economical demonstration of fusion through development of a ?DEMOnstration Power Plant? or DEMO reactor.

It is clear that additional approaches need also to be explored to find the optimal solution to the problem of bringing the Sun?s power to Earth. Alternative magnetic concepts and inertial fusion concepts are under investigation such as National Ignition Facility (NIF), the Laser Megajoule Project (LMJ), the FIREX (I and II) and Hiper project.

Fusion promises to offer a source of limitless, clean energy. What are the major challenges to be overcome in achieving commercially viable energy production using fusion?

There is no debate that fusion has the potential to produce a significant amount of energy for thousands of years. The challenge is how to make the process practical, economical, reliable and sustainable. All current fusion research is aiming to achieve that goal. And by achieving it, we will not only have energy, we will gain new structural materials, superconductors, reliable robots, new methods and tools for control and analysis, and so on.

And as a joke, let me say that we have to overcome the challenges created by impatient expectations and untimely disappointment.

When do you expect to see the first test reactor (ITER) in operation?.

The ITER schedule assumes that its first plasma will be produced in 2019.

View the original article here

Nuclear Fusion Prize Winners

Left-hand photo: John E Rice (centre), MIT, the Winner of the 2010 Nuclear Fusion journal Award receives the award certificate and trophy from the Chair of the Board of Editors of Nuclear Fusion, Mitsuru Kikuchi (left), Japan Atomic Energy Agency and Werner Burkart (right), Deputy Director General, IAEA

Right-hand photo: Steven Sabbagh, Columbia University / PPPL (centre), the Winner of the 2009 Nuclear Fusion journal Award receives the award certificate and trophy from the Chair of the Board of Editors of Nuclear Fusion, Mitsuru Kikuchi (left), Japan Atomic Energy Agency and Werner Burkart (right), Deputy Director General, IAEA

The Nuclear Fusion Prize Nuclear Fusion journal website

During the 2010 Fusion Energy Conference, held in Daejeon, Republic of Korea, the Nuclear Fusion Prize was presented to the 2009 and 2010 winners on 11 October 2010.

The Prize Winner for 2009 winner is Steve Sabbagh from the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Columbia University, New York. He received the award as the lead author of a landmark paper which reports record parameters of beta in a large spherical torus plasma and presents a thorough investigation of the physics of Resistive Wall Mode (RWM) instability. The paper makes a significant contribution to the critical topic of RWM stabilization.

The recipient of the 2010 award is John Rice, Principal Research Scientist, on the Alcator Project at MIT?s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, Cambridge, as the lead author of a seminal paper that analyzes results across a range of machines in order to develop a universal scaling that can be used to predict intrinsic rotation. The timeliness of this paper is the anticipated applicability of this scaling to ITER.

Background The Nuclear Fusion Prize is awarded annually to recognise outstanding work published in the journal.

Each year, a shortlist of ten papers is nominated for the Nuclear Fusion prize. These are papers of the highest scientific standard, published in the journal volume from two years previous to the award year. Nominations are based on citation record and recommendation by the Board of Editors. The Board then votes by secret ballot to determine which of these papers has made the largest scientific impact.

View the original article here

Experts Meet for Largest Ever IAEA Fusion Conference

The ITER Tokamak will be nearly 30 metres tall, and weigh 23 000 tons. The Tokamak is a doughnut-shaped vessel surrounded by coils that produce an intense magnetic field ? in which the conditions needed for fusion are created and maintained.

More than 1000 scientific experts met for the six-day, IAEA Fusion Energy Conference, held in Daejeon, the Republic of Korea from 11-16 October 2010. Hosted by Korea's National Fusion Research Institute, this meeting was the largest gathering the IAEA has organized on the means to use fusion as a source of energy since the Conference series began in 1961.

As the search for greener forms of electricity production intensifies, the rising attendance and the scope of the research presented at the Conference are indicative of the scientific community's growing attention to pursuing peaceful nuclear fusion. During the Conference, scientists provided 460 poster presentations, delivered over 80 lectures, in addition to more than 20 overview presentations, as well as an additional 7 overview posters, displaying the outcome of the work done by larger groups, often over a period of many years. The Youth Conference on Fusion Energy was held prior to the Conference and was attended by about 100 young researchers. This new Conference was organized by the National Fusion Research Institute in cooperation with the IAEA.

"For the world at large, fusion energy remains a distant dream but the large group of distinguished scientists gathering in Deajeon recently made important headway to move the dream closer to reality," said Werner Burkart, Head of the IAEA's Nuclear Sciences and Applications Department, who opened the Conference on behalf of IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano.

The next Fusion Energy Conference will be held in San Diego, USA from 8 to 13 October 2012.

See Story Resources for more information.

View the original article here

Facilitating Fusion Research

Caption: An artist's depiction of a giant solar flare on the red dwarf star EV Lacertae. Fusion is the process that powers the stars. Credit: Casey Reed/NASA

IAEA has always played an important role in facilitating safe and environmentally responsible nuclear energy sources.

A year after the IAEA was founded, it supported the first fusion conference in 1958. Later, in 1972 the International Fusion Research Council (IFRC) was created to provide the IAEA Director General expert advice to help steer the Agency?s controlled nuclear fusion programme and to promote international cooperation in this field.

Commercial fusion reactors are yet a theoretical possiblity. To help overcome the challenges presented in demonstrating the technological and commercial feasibility of generating electricity using fusion power, the IAEA has been collaborating with the international fusion community, and in particular with researchers at the ITER organization. ITER's partners and experts are building the world?s first international demonstration reactor for fusion power in Cadarache, France.

The IAEA has been closely involved with ITER since its inception in 1985. At that time, during the US/USSR Summit, held in Geneva in November 1985, USSR General Secretary Gorbachev proposed to U.S. President Reagan an international project aimed at developing fusion energy for peaceful purposes. This agreement lead to the establishment of the ITER project and an international agreement. The initial signatories were the former Soviet Union, the USA, the European Union and Japan. In 2003, the People's Republic of China and the Republic of Korea joined the partnership, followed by India in 2005. Together, these seven nations represent over half of the world's population. Eleven years after the Gorbachev-Reagan summit, the ITER International Fusion Energy Organization for the Joint Implementation of the ITER Project was established in November 2006. The IAEA's Director General is the Agreement's depositary.

In October 2008, ITER and the IAEA signed a cooperative agreement to exchange research information on the study and potential application of fusion energy, participate in each other?s meetings and organise joint scientific conferences. The agreement also includes plans for cooperation on training, publications, plasma physics and modelling, and fusion safety and security. In addition to cooperating with ITER, the IAEA's fusion programme focuses on increasing international cooperation and support for science and technology for fusion power.

Knowledge management and dissemination in fusion research are also strategic priorities for the IAEA. For instance, the Agency has published the monthly scientific journal Nuclear Fusion for half a century. Nuclear Fusion and related publications, the World Survey of Activities in Controlled Fusion Research, the International Bulletin on Atomic and Molecular Data for Fusion and the Atomic and Plasma-Material Interaction Data for Fusion are considered journals of record and are distributed to hundreds of institutions and researchers among Agency Member States.

The Agency also maintains nuclear data libraries, such as the Fusion Evaluated Nuclear Data Library, atomic and molecular data, and plasma-material interaction data that are relevant to fusion research. The data can be accessed via Internet on IAEA?s Nuclear Data Information System (NDIS, http://www-nds.iaea.org/ndisintro.htm) and the Atomic and Molecular Data Information System (AMDIS, http://www-amdis.iaea.org/publications/bulletin.php).

For over fifty years, the IAEA has drawn together the world's leading fusion researchers to help find ways to utilize fusion's potential for delivering clean, sustainable and abundant energy by the biennial Fusion Energy Conference. The 2010 conference takes place in Daejeon, the Republic of Korea. It assembles more physicists than ever before. The six-day conference began on 11 October and is hosted by Korea?s National Fusion Research Institute.

View the original article here

Fusion – from here to reality

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Oct 28, 2010

Fusion – the nuclear process that powers the Sun – has long held promise as a potential source of energy here on Earth. But recreating such conditions under experimental conditions is far from easy, which is one reason why a commercial fusion plant is still many decades away. Still, if physicists and engineers can pull the trick off, fusion could play a massive role as a vital part of our future energy mix.

In this exclusive physicsworld.com video, David Ward from the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) in the UK discusses the challenges in going from the ITER fusion experiment being built in southern France to a working fusion plant, dubbed DEMO. Ward, who is head of power plants and energy at the CCFE, has spent a quarter of a century in the fusion field. What's interesting is that he predicts not just one version of DEMO, but lots, with China potentially leading the way.

View the original article here