14 Jul (NucNet): A major new contract worth 283 million euros (386 million US dollars) has been signed between the European Commission and the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) in Oxfordshire, England, enabling CCFE to continue to operate the Joint European Torus (Jet) until the end of 2018.
CCFE has been operating Jet, Europe’s largest fusion energy experiment, since 2000. But the new agreement represents the largest ever single contract to be awarded to CCFE and gives Culham and the European fusion programme “unprecedented security of funding for five years”, CCFE said.
“This enables future experimental programmes and further upgrades to Jet to be planned with confidence and secures its position as a science and engineering test bed for its international successor Iter [the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor under construction at Cadarache in France].”
CCFE said the new Jet operating contract was months in preparation at the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014, but has been formally signed and the first payments to CCFE already received.
CCFE director Steve Cowley said the agreement of the contract was great news for the European fusion programme.
Late last month, engineers at CCFE began to prepare Jet for a new set of full-power experiments using tritium fuel.
The tests, scheduled for 2017-18, will be the first with tritium since 2003 and will act as an important “dress rehearsal” for Iter, due online in the early 2020s, in preparation for Iter’s own operation with tritium.
CCFE said that as the world's largest operating tokamak and the only such device capable of storing, using, recovering and recycling tritium, Jet has a unique role in fusion research. Upgrades since 2003 have effectively turned Jet into a “mini-Iter’, as close as any present-day device can get to its operating conditions.
Another series of deuterium and tritium experiments on Jet will provide scientific information to help make Iter a success, as well as giving physicists and engineers vital experience of running fusion machines with tritium, CCFE said.
The European Fusion Development Agreement (www.efda.org), which was signed by 28 European countries, helps identify the priorities for fusion research projects such as Iter and Jet. It is part of the European Commission’s Euratom programme. One of EFDA’s tasks has been to provide the framework for the use of Jet, a joint experiment between about 30 EU laboratories.
