After
months of preparation, the European Commission and the Culham Centre for Fusion
Energy signed the operation contract for Europe’s largest fusion experiment. The picture shows the inside of the
JET plasma chamber Since
2000, JET operation was being carried out under the auspices of the European
Fusion Development Agreement (EFDA). According to the in 2014 newly implemented
EU fusion research structure, the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) will
operate the JET facility under contract from the European Commission. JET
operation will be provided as an in-kind contribution to the EUROfusion
Consortium, which is responsible for implementing the coordinated programme
under a separate grant agreement with the Commission. Lorne
Horton, Head of the JET Exploitation Unit at JET, comments: ’I am pleased that
we have been able to get this contract in place and expect that CCFE will
continue to provide a first class facility for the community’s use. I am
confident that JET will continue to provide crucial and unique input to ITER.’
ITER represents the next generation fusion experiment and will start operation
in the early 2020’s. The
€283 million contract represents the largest in the history of JET with an
unprecedented duration of five years. Tony Donné, Manager of the European Joint
Programme is also satisfied with the finalisation of the contract: ’The fact
that we can now rely on a five year contract until the end of 2018, makes it
easier for us and CCFE to fulfil the goal defined in the new EU framework
programme. That is to deliver what is agreed on in the ‘Roadmap to the
realisation of fusion energy’. Background EU’s
research and innovation programme Horizon 2020 sets the budget for the next
period from 2014 to 2020. EURATOM – under which fusion and fission research is
covered – is part of Horizon 2020. Due to a different legal basis, EURATOM’s
budget is limited to five year periods; from 2014-2018. The yearly fusion
budget amounts in that period to 145.6 Million Euro/year. The
Joint European Torus, JET, is the world’s largest tokamak and is operated as a
common facility for researchers across Europe. Under EUROfusion, three more
tokamaks - situated in Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Germany – are
operated in part as common facilities. When it begins operation in 2015 the
German stellarator Wendelstein 7-X will also become the focus of European
research on stellarators. One tokamak in France and various linear devices – in
Germany and The Netherlands – will test materials from other laboratories and
experiments. ITER
(latin for “the way”) is an international Tokamak research and engineering
project designed to prove the scientific and technological feasibility of a
full-scale fusion power reactor. It is currently being built in France. Over
the last decades, the European fusion programme has advanced to the point of
requiring complex and large-scale projects, the most recent of which being the
construction and operation of ITER in international partnership.
These
large-scale experiments require a more effective pooling of national research
efforts and resources. To meet this challenge, the European laboratories have
decided to launch a joint programme through the consortium EUROfusion.
EUROfusion is the successor of EFDA. The consortium aims to realise EFDA’s
“Roadmap to the realisation of fusion energy”. |
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