Fusion: ITER gets started, ICF raises profile

摘要

The 17th topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy was "embedded" at the ANS Winter Meeting, and the location in Albuquerque essentially put the entire fusion community based at Sandia National Laboratories within daily commuting distance of the meeting. But while several of the meeting's sessions focused mainly or entirely on technical papers related to inertial confinement fusion (ICF)—such as the Z-Pinch reactor design, based on Sandia's operating Z Machine experiment—magnetic confinement fusion has garnered far more attention lately in the wider world, with the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) about to be formally established at a signing ceremony in France during the week following the meeting.