European tour of the 2024 JT-60SA school

9 Mar 2025, 00:00 → 16 Mar 2025, 23:59 Europe/Berlin

Monday 10 March

Travel: Travel to institute

1 U6 underground to Garching Forschungszentrum

Public transportation website; https://efa.mvv-muenchen.de/index.html#trip@enquiry

U6 underground (U-Bahn) from Garching to Garching Forschungszentrum
- 1 stop, travel time: 3 minutes
- single ticket (2 EUR) or 1 strip (10 stripes on "Streifenkarte")

Time table;
8.30, 8.36, 8.40, 8.46, 8.50,...

Visit: Visit of Garching Campus (EUROfusion, IPP, F4E)

2 Welcome

3 Overview of the EUROfusion Science Department

EUROfusion coordinates the research and development activities across Europe in 26 countries of the European Union and 3 partners (United Kingdom, Switzerland and Norway).
The EUROfusion Plasma Science Department coordinates the scientific exploitation and research activities across the European devices (MAST-U, TCV, WEST, ASDEX Upgrade, Wendelstein-7X) as well as JT-60SA.

4 Coffee break with meet and greet

5 Fusion for Energy

Fusion for Energy (F4E) is the European domestic agency of ITER. In addition, F4E is the European Implementing Agency who together with our Japanese implementing agency QST manages the Broader Approach Agreement including IFMIF EVEDA (Rokkasho site), JT-60SA (Naka-site) and the IFERC supercomputer.
F4E has 3 sites, Garching (mainly Broader Approach projects), Barcelona (mainly ITER projects) and Cadarache.

Website: https://fusionforenergy.europa.eu

Food: Lunch

6 Lunch at Goldbraun

Burgers and salads
Website: https://goldbraun.de
Address: Walther-van-Dyck-Straße 4, 85748 Garching bei München
Phone: +49- 89 360 894 15
Email: garching@goldbraun.de

Visit: Visit of ASDEX Upgrade, BATMAN Upgrade and ELISE

Travel: Travel to Garching

7 U6 underground to Garching

Public transportation website; https://efa.mvv-muenchen.de/index.html#trip@enquiry

U6 underground (U-Bahn) from Garching to Garching Forschungszentrum
- 1 stop, travel time: 2 minutes
- single ticket (2 EUR) or 1 strip

Time table;
17.00, 17.06, 17.10, 17.16, 17.20, 17.26, 17.30, ..

Food: Dinner at Garchinger Augustiner

8 Dinner at the Garchinger Augustiner

German restaurant and Biergarten
Website: http://www.garchinger-augustiner.com
Menu: http://www.garchinger-augustiner.com/Österreichwochen%20Januar%202025%20web.pdf (scroll down for English)

Address: Freisinger Landstraße 4, 85748 Garching b. München
Phone: +49-89 20 966 739
Email: info@garchinger-augustiner.com

Tuesday 11 March

Travel: Travel to institute

9 U6 underground to Garching Forschungszentrum

Public transportation website; https://efa.mvv-muenchen.de/index.html#trip@enquiry

U6 underground (U-Bahn) from Garching to Garching Forschungszentrum
- 1 stop, travel time: 3 minutes
- single ticket (2 EUR) or 1 strip

Time table;
8.30, 8.36, 8.40, 8.46, 8.50,

Visit: EUROfusion Technology Department

10 Overview of the EUROfusion Technology Activities

EUROfusion coordinates the research and development activities across Europe in 26 countries of the European Union and 3 partners (United Kingdom, Switzerland and Norway).
The EUROfusion Technology Departments overview the technology developments for fusion with particular focus to the European DEMO and VNS devices. Garching is the home to the DEMO central team, around 30 engineers working on and coordinating the VNS and DEMO design.

11 Group work on VNS requirements

Food: Lunch at the institute

12 Lunch at the IPP canteen

Menu is provided one week in advance, and includes a meat-dish, vegetarian dish and a salad. Other options include the bakery with sandwiches, pastry and salads, as well as a Chinese and Turkish kiosk in front of the institute.

Wednesday 12 March

Visit: CEA programme

13 Presentation on WEST tokamak and the CEA research programme

IRFM is an institute of CEA, the French Alternatives Energies and Atomic Energy Commission. Located in the CEA Cadarache Centre, with ITER next door, the 200+ physicists, engineers and technicians of the Institute carry out research on Magnetic Fusion as a potential future energy source. The Cadarache site is the host of the WEST superconducting tokamak that recently reached the world record of longest plasma discharge of 22 minutes!

Website: https://irfm.cea.fr/en/index.php
World record news: https://irfm.cea.fr/en/Phocea/Vie_des_labos/Ast/ast.php?t=fait_marquant&id_ast=982

14 Tour of the WEST tokamak and control room

Visit of the WEST control room in 2 groups. One group will get a tour from an expert in WEST operations, and the second group will get a tour by a task force leader (equivalent to the Experiment Team leaders) of the WEST programme. After 20-30 minutes, the groups will switch. Visit of the WEST torus hall is to be confirmed.

Travel: Taxi to ITER

Food: Lunch at the ITER canteen with Japanese IO staff

Visit: ITER programme

15 Meet and Greet with the ITER Director General

16 Tour of the ITER worksite

Website: https://www.iter.org

17 Workshop with the ITER staff (to be confirmed)

Friday 14 March

Visit: UKAEA programme

18 Welcome at UKAEA

19 Overview of the UK Fusion Programme

Towards Fusion Energy 2023 - UK's fusion strategy: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65301b78d06662000d1b7d0f/towards-fusion-energy-strategy-2023-update.pdf

20 Future of tokamaks lecture

21 Tour of MAST Upgrade

The Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST) Upgrade is the UK's national fusion experiment. MAST-U is a spherical tokamak primarily focuses on plasma exhaust with its Super-X divertor and test technology innovations for a compact tokamak design on route to STEP.

Website: https://ccfe.ukaea.uk/programmes/mast-upgrade/

22 Tour of the RACE robotics centre

Remote Applications in Challenging Environments (RACE) is an institute of UKAEA on their Culham campus. They design, build and operate robotics for extreme industrial environments, working towards the goal: bringing fusion energy to the grid. The activities include remote handling of JET and future fusion reactors.

Website: https://race.ukaea.uk

23 Tour of the MRF material research facility

UKAEA’s Materials Research Facility (MRF) prepares and examines samples of active materials to assess their performance in fusion reactors. MRF is part of the UK Government’s National Nuclear User Facility and the Henry Royce Institute for Advanced Materials.

Website: https://mrf.ukaea.uk

24 Lunch and networking

25 Tour of JET (torus hall, assembly hall, remote handling, control room)

The Joint European Torus (JET) was the world's largest and most advanced tokamak funded by the European Commission, exploited by the European fusion community under EUROfusion and hosted by UKAEA on the Culham site.

Website:
https://euro-fusion.org/devices/jet/
https://ccfe.ukaea.uk/programmes/joint-european-torus/

26 JET control room exercise (to be confirmed)

27 Discussion with UK scientists on the JET DT campaigns