British workers at JET accept pay deal
During the 1980s the European Court of Justice in Strasbourg agreed that the British workers had been discriminated against, and in 1996 the court ordered the European Commission to settle the case. T...
Dispute threatens JET extension
Under the terms of the new European Fusion Development Agreement (EFDA), JET would no longer carry out one common programme of work approved by the EU. Instead, the JET facilities would be run by the ...
New director for Max Planck plasma lab
The IPP runs a tokamak called ASDEX and is also building a stellarator fusion device known as Wendelstein 7-X at it lab in Greifswald. If ITER is built in Japan, Bradshaw says he will lobby for Garchi...
Lasers fuel path to fusion
The clusters were produced by expanding a deuterium gas jet into a vacuum. A laser beam focussed near the top of the plume heats the clusters, causing them to explode. This creates a small plasma of h...
Physics misses out in US budget
At the DOE, the budget for basic energy science is set to rise by 11%, with two-thirds of this going to meet construction costs for the Spallation Neutron Source being built at Oak Ridge. Fusion resea...
International projects face flak in Congress
Sensenbrenner has long campaigned against ITER, an international collaboration between fusion labs in Europe, Japan, Russia and the US. He claims that ITER has soaked up valuable funds that could be u...
New light on plasma properties
Previous experiments found it difficult to measure plasma spectra because the high temperatures inside the plasma caused the spectral lines to blur. The Weizmann team solved the problem by adding oxyg...
American hesitation puts ITER in limbo
The Department of Energy (DOE), which oversees fusion research in the US, wanted to sign the extension. However, the Republican-controlled Congress insisted that the US should not sign it without R...
US Energy Secretary resigns
During his term in office Peña has promoted management reforms across the department and increased transparency at the national labs. Peña’s involvement in promoting awareness of the g...
Cheaper fusion machine sought
The international thermonuclear experimental reactor (ITER) was intended to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion energy by producing an ignited, energy-yielding plasma fo...
