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Last Tuesday 3^rd of May, our group attended the Meeting Climate Change Targets: The Role of Nuclear Energy webinar organized by the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA). The main scope of the event was devoted to explore the role of nuclear technologies and their applications toward achieving the globally recognized goal of Net Zero. While our research is focused on developing nuclear fusion as a new source of electricity for the second half of this century, the webinar provided us with an excellent opportunity to learn about the current status of nuclear energy in the present energy policy context as well as to understand the potential role that nuclear energy could have in emission reduction.

The webinar was divided into three parts. It started with brief talks from keynote speakers, followed by a main webinar presentation by Head of the Division of Nuclear Technology Development and Economics at NEA Diane Cameron about the upcoming NEA report, and ended up with a Q&A session.

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The 48^th European Physical Society (EPS) Conference on Plasma Physics will be held in the online format from June 27 to July 1, 2022. This annual conference covers the wide field of plasma physics including magnetic confinement fusion, beam plasma and inertial fusion, low temperature plasmas, and basic, space and astrophysical plasmas. The program can be found on the conference website and the registrations are now open here. Among others, the conference will be a great opportunity to listen to the lectures given by the Hannes Alfvén prize recipients as well as by the Innovation prize awardees.

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The European Physical Society (EPS) Plasma Physics Innovation Prize was established in 2008 to recognize and promote the wider benefits to society that arise from the applications of plasma physics research. The prize is awarded once a year and is managed by EPS Plasma Physics Division Board, where our group leader Prof. Mervi Mantsinen is a member since 2021.

This year, the EPS Plasma Physics Innovation Prize has been awarded to Dr Ane Aanesland, Dr Dmytro Rafalskyi and Javier Martínez Martínez for the technological, industrial and societal applications of research in plasma physics through their pioneering development of iodine-fueled plasma-based electric propulsion systems for satellites.

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Last year the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) hosted its annual Introduction to Fusion Energy and Plasma Physics Course online. Open access to recorded lectures makes this an excellent resource for undergraduates, recent graduates, and anyone new to fusion research. The course was developed as part of the Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI) program funded by the US Department of Energy.

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On a previous post, we commented about the recent record achieved by the Joint European Torus (JET), in a unique set of D-T experiments. In this post, we would like to add several other records set by other fusion devices. In particular, we will be talking about the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR), the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) and the National Ignition Facility (NIF). By all means, we can say that the period from 2020 up to the near future, will be remembered as a period of success and milestone fulfillment in the fusion field.

A distinction should be made between KSTAR, EAST and NIF as the physical mechanism to reach nuclear fusion is different. While KSTAR and EAST are two superconducting tokamaks, i.e. they rely on superconducting magnets which constraint the plasma shape and dynamics, NIF is a fusion device consisting of several lasers which heat and compress a small amount of a hydrogen (or an isotope as deuterium) pellet. Both mechanisms are known in the fusion field as, magnetic confinement fusion and intertial confinement fusion, respectively. Let’s now have a look at their respective records.

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