Strong Culham participation at leading European fusion conference

Of particular note at the event – Europe’s premier fusion science conference, hosted online for the first time ever – was a plenary talk from UKAEA Chief Scientist William Morris. Entitled “Towards a Fusion Reactor: Integration of Physics and Technology”, William’s talk provided an overview of the scientific and technical challenges facing the development of fusion energy and the importance of an integrated approach to developing designs for power plants, such as the EU DEMO and UK STEP programmes.

Further UKAEA contributions included Kevin Verhaegh’s talk accompanying his EPS PhD research award. This focused on developing techniques to understand divertor detachment (techniques used to minimise contact between the fusion device’s plasma fuel and its ‘divertor’ exhaust system) using spectroscopic techniques on the Swiss tokamak, TCV. This has led to new insights into understanding what drives the dissipation of particles in tokamak divertors – something essential for future fusion devices, including ITER and beyond. These techniques will be applied to UKAEA’s MAST Upgrade experiment to better understand the potential benefits of advanced divertor configurations.

Other work presented by UKAEA at the event ranged from disruption mitigation in JET and stability in the core and edge of tokamak plasmas, to instabilities caused by fusion reactions, exhaust physics and the importance of confronting scientific and engineering challenges to develop integrated power plant designs.

UKAEA’s Science Programme Leader for MAST Upgrade, James Harrison, said: “It was great to see such strong participation in Europe’s most prestigious plasma physics conference, with over 12 UKAEA researchers in attendance.

“The breadth of contributions, on key topics for ITER and other future fusion devices, shows how we’re making a strong contribution to the success of fusion energy.”

For more information please visit the EPS website.