The ultimate challenge of fusion research is the realization of electricity generation from magnetic confinement fusion within a reasonable time horizon. ITER (www.iter.org) will be the world’s largest experimental fusion facility and is designed to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion power for energy purposes. Fusion research is aimed at developing a prototype fusion power plant that is safe and reliable, environmentally responsible and economically viable, with abundant and widespread fuel resources. Fusion has the capacity to produce energy on a large scale, using plentiful fuels, and releasing no carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases. The scientific advances enabled by ITER, will considerably improve the ability to predict the behavior of burning plasmas for future reactors. But to become economical, fusion power will require developments beyond ITER and certainly it will be necessary to develop the engineering and technology of the first generation of fusion reactors. ITER is an important step on the road to these first fusion power plants.

The Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear (IPFN) contributes to activities related to the construction of ITER and preparatory R&D activities leading to it. The Portuguese participation in the ITER construction is focused on i) Control and Data Acquisition for long-time operation of fusion experiments and R&D on high-availability and high-reliability; ii) Remote Handling and iii) development of diagnostics (in particular microwave diagnostics). These are areas where the expertise of IPFN’s researchers is widely recognized. All the activities are carried out through the European Joint Undertaking for ITER and the Development of Fusion Energy (F4E) calls for participation or through International calls issued by the ITER International Organisation. The total value of contract and grants awarded to IPFN amount to over 11M€.

The consortium lead by IPFN, with CIEMAT (Spain) and IFP-CNR (Italy), was awarded an 8.5M€ grant for development of the Plasma Position Reflectometer for ITER. The contract covers R&D (including prototypes of transmissions lines and MW electronics), engineering, quality support and managerial activities, testing from functional specifications up to supply of an approved final design and support for production of manufacturing drawings for all components of the system as well as the final design for electronics components and for data acquisition and real-time software. The contract acknowledges a long tradition of development in this domain by IPFN and the successful demonstration on AUG of plasma position feedback control via reflectometry (one paper considered top10 paper of 2012 on Nuclear Fusion). Additionally IPFN has also a strong contribution on the contract for the development of ITER Collective Thomson Scattering diagnostic (contract lead by DTU, IST funding ~3.5M€). Apart for the recognized expertise already existing at IPFN, these projects will require fostering new competencies, considered essential in the frame of the EU Fusion Programme, in the areas of neutronics (in collaboration with C2TN), thermal-mechanical analysis, component engineering design and simulation using CAD (CATIA) and HFSS, systems integration, RAMI, mobile robotics and signal processing.

In the field of control and data acquisition IPFN lead the consortium with CIEMAT and UPM (Spain) to develop innovative solutions for ITER prototype Fast Plant System Controller. The contract (2 years, 1.5M€) contributed to the ITER Plant Control Design Handbook effort of standardization on fast controllers and resulted in ~20 publications in peer-review journals. IPFN provides F4E with consulting regarding CODAC through a contract with F4E (lead by INDRA) for Provision of System & Instrumentation Engineering support with a value of ~0.5 M€.

In the area of Remote handling IPFN lead two F4E grants in consortium (with CIEMAT/ASTRIUM and ASTRIUM) for feasibility and logistic studies for the nominal operations of the Cask Transfer System (CTS) in the ITER buildings (Tokamak and Hot Cell). Results were crucial to proceed with the construction of ITER Tokamak building. Application software was developed and tested for optimization and path following of the CTS trajectories inside the buildings. These RH tasks were an opportunity for a significant number of publications (15+) and collaborations with several EU groups. IP protection for the engine implementing the steering and motion capabilities of a single wheel is currently under evaluation.

IPFN activities are anchored in ambitious and high-impact programmes, not only in nuclear fusion but also on intense lasers and plasma technologies), and are specialized on topics where the innovative role of the unit and the leadership of its members have been consistently acknowledged. In this respect, the due recognition of the ground-breaking innovative nature of ITER related activities, a project presently amongst the most challenging scientific and engineering endeavours, is by itself a distinct qualification factor. The ITER related projects require advances beyond the state-of-art, not only with tremendous potential societal impact but also with near-term strong links to industry. Overall, by leveraging competencies across the country, IPFN has created groups with critical mass and the required multidisciplinarity to be competitive in the participation to ambitious large-scale physics projects.