The CEA inaugurated the WEST tokamak on April 6, 2018 in the presence of national and local elected officials, and institutional investors who funded it.
After encouraging first results, CEA’s tokamak is starting its new life together with its partners. It’s really a new fusion machine that researchers have learned to operate in the recent months. Indeed the Tore Supra Tokamak has undergone a profound transformation. Becoming WEST for “Tungsten (chemical symbol W) Environment in Steady-state Tokamak”, it will have to test one of the key components of ITER, the divertor and explore the unknowns of physics and operation of long-lasting plasmas in tungsten environment.
Becoming WEST for “Tungsten (chemical symbol W) Environment in Steady-state Tokamak”, it will have to test one of the key components of ITER, the divertor and explore the unknowns of physics and operation of long-lasting plasmas in tungsten environment.
After four years of work from 2013 to 2016, an important milestone was reached with a first plasma in December 2016. At the end of 2017 WEST joined the family of tokamaks with divertor by realizing its first plasma with an “X-Point”. This magnetic configuration makes it possible to go into improved confinement mode, and to test the components that face the plasma in conditions similar to those foreseen in ITER.
Since then, progress on this new machine is constant. The experimental program that embeds the national and international fusion community draws a shared roadmap for the coming years. On the 6th of April, the tokamak WEST was inaugurated with the CEA team and in the presence of representatives of the institutions that funded the transformation of Tore Supra into WEST (European Fund (Feder), State, PACA Region and Department of the Bouches du Rhône), as well as in the presence of some members of parliament, local elected officials and Bernard Bigot, IO DG.
Extract sound and lights : http://irfm.cea.fr/Phocea/Video/index.php?id=27