The ANU/ANSTO Fusion Diagnostic Project at ITER

Richard Garrett,
Senior Advisor, Strategic Projects, ANSTO.

1 pm Wednesday, 24 October 2018.

AINSE Theatre, New Illawarra Road, Lucas Heights, NSW.

Meeting hosted by ANA.

Abstract:

The ITER project, located in southern France, is a collaboration by 35 nations to build the world’s largest tokamak, a magnetic fusion device that has been designed to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy. ITER will be the first fusion device to produce net energy and to maintain fusion for long periods of time. The construction project is now well over half completed, and first plasma is scheduled for 2025. In 2016 ANSTO, acting on behalf of the Australian fusion research community, signed a research collaboration agreement with the ITER Organisation, which allows researchers from designated Australian organisations to participate in ITER research projects, and to access ITER data and codes.

The most significant activity under the agreement is a ITER-ANU-ANSTO collaboration to install a unique ANU designed and developed plasma diagnostic imaging instrument on the ITER reactor. The project will combine ANU’s plasma imaging technology and ANSTO’s nuclear engineering capability to develop and install the imaging system. This optical doppler coherence imaging system has unique capabilities to image the critical plasma flow speeds and temperatures in the ITER plasma boundary and exhaust regions (the “divertor”).

The status and goals of the ITER project will be introduced, and an overview of the various Australian collaborations with ITER will be given, with a focus on the coherence imaging diagnostic project.

About Dr Richard Garrett:

Richard Garrett is Senior Advisor, Strategic Projects, and Manager, Industry and External Engagement at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO). He was the Facility Director of the Australian Synchrotron Research Program until it was wound up in 2009. Richard has over 30 years of post-doctoral experience working at major synchrotron facilities in the United States and Japan, in addition to the Australian Synchrotron. He has provided expert technical advice to the Australian Synchrotron in a number of capacities, and is a key figure in ANSTO’s role as operator and now owner of the facility.

Richard has extensive international linkages with synchrotron and other nuclear science institutions, particularly in Asia. Richard a member of the Executive Council of the Asia Oceania Forum for Synchrotron Radiation Research (AOFSRR) and he chaired the International Union of Crystallography Commission on Synchrotron and X-ray Free Electron Laser Radiation from 2011 to 2017. He plays a lead role in ANSTO relationships with a number of international organisations, including the ITER organisation, the Fusion Power Coordinating Committee of the IEA, the Shanghai Institute for Applied Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the National Institute for Radiological Sciences (NIRS) in Japan.