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Report on the 7th IAEA Technical Committee Meeting held at Cannes, France, 13-16 June 2000.

Report on the IAEA Technical Committee Meeting held at Kloster Seeon, Germany, 21-23 June 1999

This paper summarizes the contents of the 5th IAEA Technical Committee Meeting on Alpha Particles in Fusion Research regarding alpha particle transport, and the confinement of alpha particles.

Report on the IAEA Technical Committee Meeting, held at Ahmedabad, India 6-7 December 1995.

Report on the IAEA Technical Committee Meeting, held at Naka-machi, Ibaraki-ken, Japan, 10-12 November 1993

Report on the IAEA Technical Committee Meeting held at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America, 25-27 January 1994.

Report on the Fifth IAEA Technical Committee Meeting and Workshop, held at the University of California, Los Angeles, California, United States of America 13-17 September 1993.

Report on the Third IAEA Technical Committee Meeting on Alpha Particle Physics in Thermonuclear Reactors held at Trieste, Italy 10-14 May 1993.

Report on the IAEA Technical Committee Meeting held at Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 15-17 June 1992.

Report on the IAEA Technical Committee Meeting held at Montreal, Quebec, Canada 8-10 September 1992.

Report on the 3rd IAEA Technical Committee Meeting held at Naka, Japan, 11-13 November 1991.

Summary report on the IAEA Technical Committee Meeting on Fast Wave Current Drive in Reactor Scale Tokamaks (Synergy and Complementarity with LHCD and ECRH) held at Arles, France, 23-25 September 1991.

This report is intended as a review for readers who are not necessarily specialists in the particular plasma diagnostic technique of LIDAR Thomson scattering discussed at the meeting.

This Technical Committee Meeting (TCM) was organized in co-operation with the IAEA, of which the International Fusion Research Council (IFRC) is an advisory body. The Japanese organizer was the Institute of Laser Engineering, sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture. There were 165 participants who presented 86 papers. Four workshops were held, on the topics Future planning of inertial fusion energy, Ion rings, Collaboration in heavy ion fusion and Laser beam smoothing.

The second IAEA Technical Committee Meeting on physics and diagnostics of fusion produced alpha particles was hosted by the Institute of Electromagnetic Field Theory and Plasma Physics (IEFT), Chalmers University of Technology, Goteborg, Sweden (for the first meeting see Ref. [1]). The programme and organizing committee consisted of the following members: F. Engelmann (ITER, Garching, Germany), Ya.I. Kolesnichenko (Institute of Nuclear Research (INR), Kiev, USSR), D.J. Sigmar (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA), K. Tani (Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute, Japan), H. Wilhelmsson (Chalmers University of Technology, Goteborg, Sweden). The IAEA was represented by V.V. Demchenko, and M. Lisak (Chalmers University) was the chairman of the local arrangements. The meeting was attended by more than 40 participants from eight countries who presented 39 papers. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the alpha particle physics issues of magnetically confined fusion plasmas, to sum up the current theoretical understanding of alpha particle physics, to discuss the imminent experiments with D-T plasma operation and to identify the most important open areas of burning plasma research.

In the week before the 13th IAEA Conference on Plasma Physics and Controlled Nuclear Fusion Research in Washington, DC, 45 participants from 16 nations gathered in Arlington, VA, for a three day meeting on Research Using Small Tokamaks under the chairmanship of D. Banner (IAEA). One of the aims of this series of meetings is to provide a forum for countries with small or developing tokamak programmes to present their recent results and, perhaps more importantly, to exchange ideas. There are usually some representatives from the more advanced fusion programmes, for example from some of the several small tokamaks just starting operation in the USA. The large number of small tokamaks represented is listed in Table I. There are, of course, many other devices that were not represented at this meeting. Most of the papers were on experimental and theoretical programmes developed within a single laboratory, but there were some co-operative experiments between small and large laboratories. Each talk was accompanied by a written paper which will appear, as usual, in an IAEA Technical Document.

The seventh Workshop on electron cyclotron emission (ECE) and electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH) as well as the IAEA Technical Committee Meeting on the same subjects were held in Hefei, China, from 9 to 11 May 1989. The Workshop was organized by the Institute of Plasma Physics, Academia Sinica (ASIPP), Hefei, under the auspices of the IAEA. About 40 delegates attended, with 30 participants coming from outside China. 50 papers were given, including six invited papers and six posters. The main subjects of the meeting were the theory of electron cyclotron resonance phenomena and the exploitation of these phenomena in plasma diagnostics (ECE) and plasma heating (ECRH). The meeting was lively and informative, and for almost every topic covered there were results which represent significant progress.

The material presented at the workshop covered a wide range of topics in current stellarator research, but many of the areas discussed also have wider relevance to toroidal confinement systems. Oral and poster sessions were held on: (1) Overviews of recent experimental results; (2) transport studies; (3) magnetic configurations; (4) magnetic surfaces and islands; (5) bootstrap currents; (6) equilibrium and stability; (7) RF heating; (8) impurities and divertors; (9) diagnostics; (10) new device designs; (11) next-generation experiments.In addition, discussion sessions were held on: (1) Electron cyclotron heating (ECH) and ion cyclotron range of frequencies (ICRF) startup; (2) transport and heating; (3) edge phenomena and impurities; (4) electric field effects; (5) instabilities and fluctuations; (6) bootstrap currents; (7) configuration effects on confinement; (8) helical axis studies; (9) advances in configuration optimization; (10) device engineering issues.

The IAEA Technical Committee Meeting on Mirror Fusion Research was held in Tsukuba, 8-12 July 1985. The Meeting was the fifth in a series on this subject, the preceding one having been held in Moscow, September 1984. The purpose of the Meeting was to exchange the latest information on mirror-based fusion research. Eighty-six physicists from five countries attended the Meeting, among whom 61 from Japan, 21 from the USA, two from the USSR, one from Austria and one from China. The presentation of 52 papers and a visit to the GAMMA 10 experimental site took three days. Because of the. large number of papers, 34 papers had to be presented in parallel sessions. After presentation of the papers, two half days were spent on panel discussions.

The IAEA Technical Committee Meeting on Impurity Control was held at the Naka Fusion Energy Research Establishment of the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI). Issues on impurity control, ash exhaust, heat removal and edge physics in presentday tokamaks and in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) were discussed.

Since neutral-beam heating of tokamaks has reached the new and interesting stage where it significantly exceeds the Ohmic power input, an IAEA-sponsored workshop on this subject was held at the American Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA. Approximately 45 attendants represented the work being done in the United Kingdom, Japan, Italy, the Soviet Union, Sweden, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the United States.

During the last six years, it has become apparent that the tokamak device affords the most straightforward route to providing a significant fusion plasma in the laboratory, with considerable potential for eventual application in fusion power reactors. Consequently, four large tokamak projects are currently being pursued in several countries: (1) The TFTR (Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor) in the USA; (2) the JET (Joint European Torus) in the European Economic Community; (3) the JT-60 (Japanese Tokamak) in Japan; and (4) the T-20 in the USSR.

A brief summary is given of the plenary sessions of the 3rd IAEA Technical Committee Meeting and Workshop on Fusion Reactor Design and Technology. The large tokamak experiments now under construction have brought fusion research to the threshold of fusion reactor power. A number of major in-depth reactor design studies are reported such as the 650-MW INTOR near term experimental fusion reactor based upon essentially current technology. Also reported are studies of commercial reactor designs. Results are given of the discussions of seven workshops that were based on the papers presented. These groups evaluated the current status and identified key problem areas for each in the following areas: near-term tokamaks, long-term tokamaks, toroidal systems (alternative concepts), open systems, inertial confinement, systems (advanced fuels, hybrids, etc.), and fusion reactor materials. The importance of beginning now to prepare for the next major step in fusion reactor development was emphasized and the benefits of international co-operation were evident in the consensus reached in the INTOR results and the strong influence it has had on the direction of the leading national design efforts.

The IAEA Technical Committee Meeting on Disruptions and Density Limits was hosted by the JET Joint Undertaking at the instigation of the International Atomic Energy Agency and was attended by 49 participants from 9 countries. This report is intended as a brief review of the meeting for readers who are not necessarily specialists in disruptions. The meeting commenced with a review by J.A. Wesson (JET) of our present understanding of disruptions. He identified five different types of disruption: density limit, low q, current rise, beta limit and vertical instability. The density limit disruption has been the most extensively studied. Wesson identified four distinct phases in its development.

The IAEA Technical Committee on Impurities in Tokamaks met at Alushta (Ukrainian SSR) from 8 to 12 October 1979. It discussed the present status of knowledge on the behaviour of impurities in tokamaks – their sources and dynamics, and the methods of controlling them. The meeting was convened at the initiative of the IAEA and organized by the Kharkov Physico-Technical Institute. At Alushta, 23 participants from seven countries (eight from USA, seven from the Federal Republic of Germany, three from France, two from Great Britain and one each from Hungary, the Netherlands and Japan) came together with 14 participants from the USSR. In more than 30 papers and during the extensive discussions which followed the presentations practically all the main aspects of the impurity problem were considered. As a result of the meeting, it became clear that in the last five years substantial advances had been made towards obtaining, in tokamaks, a sufficiently pure plasma with Zeff close to unity. This has been achieved by using new methods of purifying the discharge chamber walls, titanium gettering, graphite limiters and programmed filling of gas. Active methods of impurity control – with divertors and asymmetric injection of neutral hydrogen – were also found to be successful. The principal conclusions arrived at by the participants are reviewed below.

There are four large next-generation tokamak devices presently being designed. These are: (1) the JET (Joint European Torus) project sponsored by the Commission of the European Communities in association with EURATOM, (2) the TCT (Two-Component Torus) project underway in the United States of America, (3) the JT-60 (Japan-Tokamak) project of Japan and the T-20 tokamak project of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The meeting held in Dubna provided an opportunity for leading members of the various projects to discuss the scientific objectives and detailed design features of each device, with the hope that an informal exchange of information on what each team was trying to do and how it was going about it could lead to some useful co-ordination of effort and avoidance of duplicate effort. The timing of the meeting was such that any resulting design modifications could yet be incorporated into present designs, even in the most advanced of the projects.

The IAEA Technical Committee Meeting on Plasma Heating and Confinement in Open Systems was held in Moscow, 24-28 September 1984. 30 physicists from the USSR, USA, Japan, FRG, Italy, Sweden and the People's Republic of China attended the Meeting. A well-arranged programme gave ample opportunity for discussions of the problems under consideration.A rapid progress in the development of ambipolar tandem mirrors has been observed since the previous Meeting (1981, Novosibirsk; see Nucl. Fusion 22 (1982) 433). This progress is not only due to the attractiveness of the idea of reducing the end losses by an ambipolar electric field but, above all, to the fact that this is more and more being confirmed experimentally. At present, the tandem mirrors are the recognized leaders among the open systems, a fact reflected by the presentations at the Meeting, most of which were on tandem mirrors. A wide range of problems was discussed in these contributions: experimental results on heating and confinement obtained at the facilities already being operated, progress with the machines under construction, new ideas on possible modifications of the magnetic configuration in tandem mirrors, and several problems of tandem mirror confinement theory.

The first IAEA Technical Committee Meeting on Pellet Injection and Toroidal Confinement, sponsored jointly by the IAEA and the Max-Planck-Institut fur Plasmaphysik (IPP), Garching, was held at Gut Ising, Upper Bavaria. The local organizing committee was headed by M. Kaufmann of IPP. The Meeting followed the traditions of previous international workshops on pellet fuelling, the last of which was organized by ORNL at La Jolla in 1985. Because of the substantial improvement in the plasma parameters of pellet fuelled tokamak discharges recently achieved in different laboratories, this Meeting was primarily devoted to the discussion and analysis of the confinement properties of pellet fuelled tokamak and stellarator discharges.

The IAEA Technical Committee Meeting discussed the status and plans of the large tokamak experiments now being constructed. Engineering features of the different designs were detailed and compared in technical sessions. The latest results of tokamak research reported at the 7th International Conference on Plasma Physics and Controlled Nuclear Fusion Research (Innsbruck) were discussed and, in addition, proposals for the future tokamak research programme were presented. A final summary reviewed the problem areas requiring further attention.

Nearly 70 participants from 12 countries (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, German Democratic Republic, Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Israel, Poland, Sweden, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, United States of America, and the host country Japan) met in Kobe at the IAEA Technical Committee Meeting on Advances in Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) Research from 14 to 17 November 1983. It was the fifth Technical Committee Meeting on ICF, the last having taken place in Osaka in 1979 (Nuclear Fusion 20 (1980) 507).

The Fourth IAEA Technical Committee Meeting on Large Tokamak Experiments was held at Keidanren-Kaikan in Tokyo from 14 to 18 April, 1980. Previous meetings in this series had been held at Dubna, USSR, July 1975 [1]; Princeton, USA, November-December 1976 [2]; and Paris, France, September 1978 [3]. Eighty-five people attended the meeting, including 57 from Japan, 15 from the USA, three from the USSR, seven from Western Europe, and one from Canada.

The Fifth International Workshop on Stellarators was held on 24-28 September 1984 at the picturesque Schloss Ringberg (near Lake Tegern, Bavaria) in the Federal Republic of Germany. It was attended by over 70 participants, representing all of the countries active in stellarator research. Proceedings of the workshop have been made available.The recent increase in stellarator research was exemplified by the extension of the meeting time, from 3 days at the preceding biennial meetings in this series to 5 days at the present workshop. The vibrant nature of current stellarator research was indicated by: (1) the progress reported in experiments of all sizes; (2) the entry of new groups into the stellarator area; and (3) very substantial theory efforts plus some reactor studies.

The meeting was organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency and sponsored by the Institute of Laser Engineering of the Osaka University and the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture of Japan. Fifty participants from eight countries and fifteen observers attended the meeting.

The IAEA Technical Committee Meeting on Open Confinement Systems was held September 21 to 24, 1981, at the Novosibirsk Institute of Nuclear Physics. The meeting was attended by 46 participants from the USSR, the USA, Japan and Italy. The programme covered the following topics: ambipolar traps, simple mirrors, cusps, rotating-plasma devices, and systems with small free-path length (multi-mirror and gas-dynamic traps).

The IAEA Technical Committee Meeting on Negative Ion Beam Heating was hosted by the Culham Laboratory (United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority) at the instigation of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The meeting was attended by 38 participants from nine countries; 24 papers were presented and two panel sessions held.

The Fifth IAEA Technical Committee Meeting on Large Tokamak Experiments was held at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory on 16–20 January 1984. Representatives from all of the large tokamak devices world-wide participated in a broad-ranging discussion of the status of each major project and the plans for the future.

Non-inductive methods of generating plasma currents offer the possibility of operating tokamak reactors in steady state, which would alleviate the cyclic-stress-related problems of pulsed operation. The last few years have seen a rapid intensification of both the theoretical and experimental research in this area and much progress in evaluating the efficiencies of the potential schemes has been achieved. In order to review the progress and to identify areas for further research, the first IAEA Technical Committee Meeting on Non-inductive Current Drive in Tokamaks was held at Culham Laboratory from 18 to 21 April 1983. The meeting was attended by about 60 scientists from eleven countries who represented almost all the laboratories with substantial programmes on current drive.

A summary is given of the experimental, demonstration and commercial fusion reactor concepts presented at the Second IAEA Technical Committee Meeting and Workshop on Fusion Reactor Design. The potential role of fusion power as an inexhaustible energy source is discussed, the advances and trends in fusion reactor design assessed, and the major conclusions and recommendations of five workshop groups given.At present, designs for tokamaks are most heavily represented, with the emphasis on near-term reactor studies. Conceptual commercial reactors are becoming compact, high-power-density units. Reactor concepts are also presented for Q-enhanced mirror machines, alternate magnetic fusion concepts, and laser-and electron-beam-driven inertial confinement reactors. The fusion-fission hybrid concepts open up several approaches to fusion power, and special-topic papers cover technology problems and fusion commercialization.

The International Atomic Energy Agency convened, in the framework of its Fusion Technology and Engineering Programme, the 4th Technical Committee and Workshop on Fusion Reactor Design and Technology at Yalta, USSR, from 26 May – 6 June 1986. This report contains all summaries of sessions that were organized during the workshop. The papers presented at the meeting are being published by the Agency in its Proceedings Series.