ITER BUSINESS FORUM 2007: Business in fusion at the core of the atom

From December 10 to 14, 2007 the 13th edition of the International Conference on fusion reactor materials (ICFRM 13) was held in Nice, organized by the ITER industrial Committee in partnership with the CEA (French atomic energy commission). The aim of the Forum was to bring together 250 industrial partners (mostly French and European), some twenty major international contractors, some fifty scientists working in Fusion and directly involved with ITER, and the members of the Euratom associations, who are partners in the project management: a total of some 800 participants.

The event covered all aspects of industrial activities linked with the ITER project, with conferences organized by sector of activity and technologies (components versus plasma, fission/fusion materials, covering modules and vacuum vessel materials), and industries representing some sixty stands, business meetings and a program of visits (CEA Cadarache, Sophia Antipolis).

Theme workshops focused on the major systems composing ITER: engineering and services, vacuum vessel, magnet system, cryogenics, covering modules for the vacuum vessel, robotics and remote handling, control command, data acquisition, electrical feeding and power distribution, optical diagnosis, and assembly. In addition, a business forum with 30-minute B to B meetings and an industrial exhibition were also organized. During the opening session, the ITER Director, Kaname Ikeda, discussed the industrial perspective and the major challenges, as well as the latest advances on the site and ITER’s ongoing projects; the CEA High Commissioner, Bernard Bigot, talked about materials and production, the procurement policy and expectations of the European Industry, the European Domestic Agency “Fusion for Energy” as well as the areas of focus for the future European industrial fusion policy of the European Commission.

Three workshops were devoted in the morning of December 11th to international exchanges on the following topics: “International Partnerships”, chaired by Jean-Christophe Delvallet, Director of the CapEnergies hub, during which major industrialists from India, Japan and China met the European managers of the groups APAVE SudEurope, TUV, ISQ, AREVA NP and Cybernetix, a workshop “Industrial Partnership/Research Laboratory” on the initiative of Team Côte d’Azur, and a workshop “Investing and finding partners near the ITER site”.

This workshop brought together the investment agencies in PACA, the Regional agency for Economic Development, the CRCI PACAC and large industrial groups which gave their reports (COMEX Nucléaire, Robatel Industries, Siemens,Wipro and Cerege/Aster).

The institutional organizations that were present emphasized the assets of the region to attract foreign investors: tax exemptions and financial incentives; the region is the third hub worldwide after the USA and the UK, with 71 competitiveness clusters, 1600 foreign companies already established, 4000 jobs, and International School in Manosque linked with the ITER project and which will include all levels: from kindergarten up to secondary school, 31 different nationalities, with some 1800 pupils, and whose tuition will be compatible with that of the countries partners of the ITER project.

Denis Audoly, Director of the Sophia Antipolis R & D Centre of the Indian company WIPRO (TO for 2006: $2.5 million and 80 employees of 10 different nationalities), specializing in semi-conductors, notes that if the working hours under French law disadvantage somewhat the company’s productivity, “the intense dedication of the research teams significantly compensates this drawback”.

François Billon, Director of Comex Nucléaire, insists on setting up “business models” and applying international standards in his group, which have furthered partnerships for the past several years with the groups Mitsubishi, Framatome and Areva. For Patrick Guidel, Regional Director of Siemens which is located in Sophia Antipolis, the PACA region is a business accelerator, a meeting point for exchanges between the group’s different R & D units (USA, UK, Switzerland) of which “we are the ambassadors” and a privileged venue bringing together outstanding expertise promoting thereby technological and commercial partnerships with Eurocopter, IBM, Amadeus, SMT Electronics…   

Serge Durand, Director of the CEA; concluded the workshop. He invited all the players present to visit the Cadarache site which was created in 1959, and to foster a new dynamics by setting up over the next 8 years a “New Energies Valley” to better meet the challenges of the 21st century around the CapEnergies hub.

The Côte d’Azur which is more focused on engineering and services also wished to present its hubs to the different industrialists, especially with regard to plasma physics and mathematics simulation.

The ITER project also involves upstream the information sciences. Mathematicians, IT specialists, and physicists collaborate on the Plasma project which brings together various STIC organizations around the Cadarache CEA. Among these organizations: the CNRS, the ENSMP, INRIA and the University of Nice. The aim is to develop the most reliable and realistic models of plasma behavior in tokamaks, in which the plasma undergoes extreme conditions which prefigure those of ITER.

Since June 2007, TEAM Côte d’Azur has been mobilized with the promotion agencies of the other PACA departments and the MDER to present to Japanese and Korean companies in particular opportunities for settling in the region which is hosting the international ITER program. 12 companies were approached, of which three are seriously considering the possibility of settling in the PACA region and 3 others which are looking for partners. The visit which was organized on December 12 enabled the industrialists to discover the advanced construction of the IBM Centre La Gaude and the Energy Process Centre of the Ecole des Mines of Paris.

Parallel Robotics at the Service of Nuclear Industry

Over the past ten years a new generation of kinematics has appeared: parallel robots. There are already some hundreds available worldwide. Parallel robots are robots consisting of at least two bodies linked by more than one kinematic chain. In the Sixties, Gough, a mechanical engineer in aeronautics, designed and built a mobile platform with a parallel structure for the testing of aircraft tires (the Gough platform).He was the first to develop a structure with six kinematic chains or independent arms, enabling the platform to move in all directions. This robot with load capacities of 100 kilos and an accuracy of 0.1 mm is now called a Hexapode.

The Sophia Antipolis project team COPRIN/INRIA, whose research focuses on robotics, constraint management and interval analysis, partnered with the Vosges company CMW (Mechanical Manufacturing) under François Wildenberg’s leadership, to build a new generation prototype: the Hexapode CMW 380 which was presented at IBF 2007.

This machine-tool includes all the recent developments in automation, image processing, perception and interaction with the environment. It required, for its development, skills in mathematics, geometry, algorithms and IT sciences. This project brings together state-of-the-art technologies and is managed by Jean-Pierre Merlet, a research engineer from the CEA, former associate researcher in Japan (Tsukuba) and Canada (Montréal) who came to work for INRIA in Sophia Antipolis where is currently in charge of the COPRIN project team. “Without Jean-Pierre Merlet’s and his team’s confidence and tenacity, this project initiated 10 years ago would not have succeeded,” admits François Wildenberg. Applications for this type of machine are numerous (giant telescopes, assistance for driving, assistance for the handicapped, surgical robotics, etc.).

They can be used for instance for the machining of composites or difficult materials such as those used for ITER’s construction. HEXAPODE CMW 380 can become a portable milling machine to be positioned directly on the part to be machined, enabling High Speed Machining (HSM) with minute accuracy in 5 simultaneous axes, directly on site. This is a major innovation for ITER’s construction as are the prototypes and programs developed for the fusion industry in the field of cryogenics, presented by Air Liquide, Nexans, Nordon and the CEA at the IBF.

Cryogenics or the science of refrigeration, a new promising path for fusion

From -150 to -270°C, this is the world of the cryogenics scientist who studies very low temperatures and their effects. The root “Cryo” comes from the Greek word Kruos, meaning extreme cold, whereas the root “Genie” means production. The cryogenics scientist thus produces extreme cold! In basic research, this enables scientists to study the matter which becomes quasi-immobile under its influence.

Scientists manage to achieve fusion, at the core of the plasma, of two cores of deuterium and tritium atoms, producing a new form of energy. Deuterium, a hydrogen atom whose core has an additional neutron, is an isotope, cousin of hydrogen, whereas tritium is another hydrogen isotope.To achieve fusion, the plasma is heated at temperatures ranging from 100 to 150 million degrees. These temperatures will be reached at the core of the ITER vessel, some components of which will go down to –271°C.

As time went by, civilizations discovered that significant thermal variations exist naturally in the universe. Indeed, 2,500 kilometers under our feet, the earth core is over 5,500°C whereas in the sun’s core the temperature is 15 million degrees. The most distant areas of the universe can reach -270°C representing the lowest existing temperature.

These temperatures enable the matter to display all its states from solid, liquid and gas to plasma. They are obtained naturally based on the pressure of the environment and on the gravity forces that influence the agitation of the matter’s molecules. However, cryogenics scientists can reach temperatures of 0.21 K by helium evaporation on a surface.

Lower temperatures can also be reached using other sophisticated methods. Hence it is possible to feed the plasma at its core. Injected at very high speed, the deuterium ice block is driven to the exact site of the plasma where the temperatures are highest. But cryogenics has other feats in store. Physicists have discovered that some substances, such as helium, reach the limits of extreme cold while developing remarkable properties.

These fluids lose all their viscosity and slide on any kind of medium: they become superfluid. For instance, superfluid helium which flows on the ground covers without any problem all the obstacles it encounters, even spreading up the walls. Cryogenics scientists have also discovered that superfluid helium conducts heat without undergoing any thermal loss.

This feature enables it to absorb the heat from any source of energy. This technology is already being used by the research laboratories JT-60 in Japan or Tore Supra in Cadarache. Superfluid helium is injected in the core of the alloy (niobium/titanium) of which the vessel containing the plasma is made. Cooled down to very low temperature, this alloy does not offer any resistance to electrical current, this is supraconductivity. Research conducted at ITER will thus enable scientists to refine their knowledge on electromagnetic supraconductors, which are more powerful than superfluidity.

LHC, the largest particle accelerator in the world by cryogenics

It’s in Saclay, under the French-Swiss border in a tunnel of 27 kilometers in circumference, that the Accelerators, Cryogenics and Magnetism Department (SACM) of the Dapnia, a research laboratory studying the fundamental laws of the Universe was constructed 100 meters below ground level. This is the largest cryogenic infrastructure ever made, in which the CNRS and the CEA designed and validated with the CERN teams the superfluid helium cryogenics at -271°C – a temperature lower than that of deep space. This accelerator called Large Hadron Collider (LHC): the project was started in 1996 and was completed at the end of 2007. It consists of 1700 large magnets, of which 392 quadri-polar magnets, which must guide and focus the beams, as well as a number of correction magnets.

In the coming three years, efforts will focus first on the completion of the LHC. Developments on intense proton or radioactive ion beams meeting the needs of many scientific communities will be continued. Tests on the 70 coils of the W7-X stellarator, contributions to the international ITER thermonuclear reactor project, participation in the future center of neuro-imaging Neurospin and in the projects of 4th generation light sources complete this ambitious panorama. These projects require considerable opening and many partnerships with other CEA and CNRS units as well as with all the major laboratories working on particle physics and nuclear physics and with many industries worldwide.