Fusion energy using tokamaks: can development be accelerated?

Speaker biography not available

Tony Donné has been involved in fusion research since 1985. Since June 2014 he has been Programme Manager (CEO) of EUROfusion, the consortium coordinating the R&D in the field of fusion science and technology in Europe and which is additionally responsible for the (pre-)conceptual design of the DEMO device. Until June 2014 he worked at the Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research; from 2009 – 2014 as Head of the Fusion Research Division. Tony was director of the Dutch-Russian 'Center of Excellence on Fusion Physics and Technology' and programme director of the ITER-NL consortium. He is professor at Eindhoven University of Technology in Diagnostics and Heating of Fusion Plasmas. A substantial part of his scientific career was devoted to the design and use of plasma diagnostics at various fusion devices. He coordinated during 10 years the international activities in the field of diagnostics for ITER.

Speaker biography not available

Dr Kamada is Director of the Department of Advanced Plasma Research, Naka Fusion Institute, National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology (QST), andJapanese Project Manager of the JT-60SA Project. He is also Chair of ITER Science and Technology Advisory Committee (STAC) and the representative of Japan on the ITPA (International Tokamak Physics Activity) Coordinating Committee. He graduated from the University of Tokyo, Department of Nuclear Engineering in 1988, then started tokamak experimental studies at JT-60U. The main research fields are; development of steady-state high integrated performance tokamak plasmas, study on high beta plasmas and study on edge and pedestal physics. 

Ian Chapman is CEO of the UK Atomic Energy Authority and Head of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy.  He has held a number of international roles in fusion, including Chair of ITER international working groups.  He has published over 110 journal papers, one of which was shortlisted for the Nuclear Fusion Award in 2013, and given 30 invited lead-author presentations at international conferences. He received the European Physical Society Early Career Prize in 2014, the Institute of Physics Paterson Medal in 2013, the IUPAP Plasma Physics Young Scientist Prize in 2012 and the Cavendish Medal for Best early-career UK physicist in 2011. He was made a Fellow of the Institute of Physics in 2013 and became a visiting Professor at Durham University in 2015.

Professor Hartmut Zohm received his PhD in Physics from Heidelberg University in 1990. In 1991, he got the Otto-Hahn-Medal by the Max-Planck Society for his PhD work. In 1996, he received his Habilitation at Augsburg University and became a professor in Plasma Research at Stuttgart University. Since 2000, he is a director at Max-Planck-Institute for Plasma Physics.

Professor Zohm’s main fields of interest are the magnetohydrodynamic stability of fusion plasmas and their heating by Electron Cyclotron Resonance Heating. By combining these two fields, he pioneered active stabilisation of neoclassical magnetic islands, which set a major performance limit to the tokamak. For this work, he received the John Dawson Award by the APS in 2014 and the Hannes Alfvén Prize in 2016. His present field is the study of tokamak physics on the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak which is operated by his department. More recently, he became involved in the European studies for a demonstration fusion power plant (DEMO). 

Melanie is Communications Consultant for Tokamak Energy. She has a PhD in Plasma Physics from Imperial College London during which time she worked on vertical stability in the MAST tokamak at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy. Subsequently she worked with Swiss inventions company Iprova and is named inventor on various patents.

Melanie’s communication work is wide-ranging and she regularly engages with the media, education institutions and the general public to talk about science and the role it can play in shaping the future.  She is an ambassador for the government-led Your Life campaign encouraging more students into science and maths careers. 

Melanie is the author of an introductory book on fusion energy, entitled Star Chambers: the race for fusion power, and of the narrative popular science book Aurora: In Search of the Northern Lights, for which she was awarded the Institute of Physics Rutherford Plasma Physics Communication Prize 2017.  

Alan Costley studied physics at Brunel University and Imperial College graduating with a PhD in 1976. Early professional years were spent at the National Physical Laboratory where he developed techniques in sub-millimeter wave spectroscopy.  In 1983 he joined the JET project at the Culham Laboratory as leader of one of the diagnostic groups.  From 1994 – 2009 he was Head of the Diagnostics in ITER. He now works as a consultant and in recent years has consulted for the ITER Organisation, the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, and Tokamak Energy Ltd.  He was awarded the Charles Vernon Boys Prize of the Institute of Physics for distinguished research in experimental plasma physics by a young researcher. In 2008 he was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He has published about 300 papers including about 40 invited papers at international conferences mainly in the areas of plasma physics and plasma diagnostics.

Dr Menard is the Research Director for the National Spherical Torus eXperiment – Upgrade (NSTX-U) and is responsible for guiding the scientific research program of NSTX-U working with the NSTX-U national research team. His research interests include the equilibrium and stability properties of spherical torus (ST) and tokamak plasmas, advanced operating scenarios in the ST, and the development of next-step options for fusion energy.

A recognized leader in the field of fusion research using the magnetic confinement of plasmas for energy production, Professor Whyte’s work in magnetic fusion specializes on the interface between the plasma and materials.

Professor Whyte has over 300 publications and as an educator is heavily involved in student design activities through courses. Recently he has been working with students to advance surface and material measurement techniques of fusion and reactive power plant designs for pilot plants.

He has served as leader of the Boundary-Plasma Interface Topical Group of the US Burning Plasma Organization and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Dr Elizabeth Surrey is the Head of Technology at CCFE where she is responsible for the UK contribution to the Power Plant Physics and Technology Programme within Eurofusion and for the UK Technology Growth programme within the EPSRC Fusion Programme. Under her leadership CCFE has taken a significant role in the EU DEMO concept design, leading the integration studies, remote maintenance, safety, engineering design codes and standards and the socio-economic studies supporting power plant development in addition to contributing in many areas of engineering design and scientific research. Elizabeth has worked at Culham for 30 years in various areas encompassing industrial and defence applications of particle beams, including OEM of injector systems for commercial cyclotrons, and neutral beam injectors for fusion. Her current research interests include fusion power plant design, advanced materials and manufacture, the application of virtual engineering to fusion and fusion strategy.

Professor George Smith, FRS, FIMMM, FInstP, FRSC, CEng, is a materials scientist with special interest in the study of the materials at the atomic level, particularly materials for energy systems.  From 2000 - 2005 he was Head of the Department of Materials at Oxford University.  He was a member of the MatUK Energy Materials Working Group, and led the writing of their report for the DTI on Nuclear Energy Materials.  He has particular interests in the long-term safety and stability of the materials used in current-generation nuclear reactors, and those planned for use in future fusion energy systems.  He retired from his academic post in Oxford in 2010, but continues to be active in research as an Emeritus Professor of Materials, and acts as an external consultant to a private sector fusion energy company, Tokamak Energy Ltd.

Niek Lopes Cardozo is professor of 'Science and Technology of Nuclear Fusion' in the Applied Physics department of Eindhoven University of Technology. He has more than 35 years experience in fusion research, authored 100+ papers and supervised 30+ PhD theses. Former leader of the Dutch fusion research programme (2001-2009), he was member of the top-level European fusion governance committees, including as vice-chair of the Governing Board of the European Domestic Agency for ITER ‘Fusion for Energy’. He received the 2003 Koninklijke/Shell prize for sustainable development and energy research. 

His group runs an interdisciplinary 2-year Fusion Master program, with 20+ international students per year. He has initiated the European Fusion Education Network FUSENET (60+ members) and the consortium ITER-NL, in which Dutch research institutes collaborate with industry for the ITER project. 

As major responsibility beside his university position, he chaired the Dutch Organisation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM), the physics branch of the national science council NWO, from 2010 to 2017. In that role he also chaired the interdisciplinary NWO research theme Sustainable Energy and was member of the leading energy related committees in the Netherlands.

In recent years his research focus has been on the prospects of fusion energy, in view of the outstanding technical challenges on the one hand and the progress in other energy technologies on the other.

Dr Thomas obtained a PhD in high energy theory from University of Manchester in 1974. After post-docs in University of California Irvine and Cambridge University, he joined the UKAEA in 1978. In 1980, he joined the JET team and left as acting Deputy Director in 2000. Dr Thomas then went to the CEA, Centre d'Etudes at Cadarache, where he worked on Tore-Supra. In 2008, he was appointed Head of Heating, Diagnostics and Controls at Fusion for Energy in Barcelona. In 2010, Dr Thomas returned to Cadarache to join the ITER Team as Head of Heating and Current Drive Division. He was appointed to the post Director of the CHD Department from which he retired in 2015. Since then, Dr Thomas has been a consultant at Tokamak Energy.

Colin Windsor studied at Oxford, gaining his DPhil in 1963, and was a post-doctorial fellow at Yale. Joining Harwell he performed experiments on neutron scattering for many years before joining Culham Fusion Laboratory in 1994. He worked on neural net control of the COMPASS-D tokamak, on the spherical tokamak START and on the JET tritium campaign of 1997. In retirement he has used neural networks for disruption prediction, mine detection using radar, and for signature recognition. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society (1995), the Institute of Non-Destructive Testing (1994), and the Institute of Physics (1975) who in 1986 awarded him their Duddell medal for developments in instrumentation. In 1990 he was made an Honorary Professor of Physics at Birmingham University. In 2013 he became a consultant to Tokamak Energy, a private company dedicated to accelerating the development of fusion power. He has worked on the key problem of the centre column shield neutronics with papers on the energy deposition, the shield modelling and the radiation damage.