Progress of fusion technology: summary of FIP, FNS, MPT, and SEE from the 27th IAEA Fusion Energy Conference

Abstract

Two hundred and twenty-five papers relevant to fusion technology and engineering were presented at the 27th IAEA Fusion Energy Conference. The ITER project has reached 57.4% of the total construction work scope through to first plasma. Construction of ITER is indeed progressing at full speed, with some ITER components having already been manufactured, such as the toroidal field coil structures and the gyrotrons of the electron cyclotron heating and current drive system, as a result of decades of technological development. Construction of JT-60SA and WEST is also progressing on schedule to support ITER in various engineering and physics aspects. The EU and Japan are advancing with their pre-conceptual designs for DEMO, and the experience and lessons learned from ITER are already being applied to both designs. China reported on the status of the China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor engineering design. One of the technical issues evident from these DEMO designs is the interfacing of the plasma-facing, in-vessel components with plasmas. Advanced plasma-facing elements having liquid metals and an advanced in situ boron coating technology were applied to existing fusion reactors, the results of which were reported at this conference. It was also reported that commissioning of the injector for the International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility engineering validation and engineering design activities (IFMIF/EVEDA) project has been completed and testing of the Radio Frequency Quadrupole accelerator has begun. Europe and Japan presented their plans to construct neutron irradiation test facilities: the DEMO-Oriented Neutron Source (DONES) and Advanced Fusion Neutron Source (A-FNS), respectively. A new strategy based on a probability-based design method was proposed to mitigate the difficulty of defining the allowable limit for irradiation-induced degradation with limited empirical evidence.