Strong bonds
This month’s topic brings home a key message that I hope you will all take to heart: Embrace opportunities to reach out to colleagues across the directorate to benefit from their experience and expertise. It is advantageous to our mission when we can expand the impact of our specific experiences and capabilities to new endeavors. Next month’s issue will focus on the impact of veterans on our organization, in coordination with our ORNL Gives campaign for three veteran-serving organizations. Our Connections editor, Amy Reed (reedac@ornl.gov) welcomes staff to contact her with suggestions.
—Kathy McCarthy, Associate Laboratory Director, May 2021
Building the MPEX magnet system with lessons learned from US ITER
As ORNL’s Material Plasma Exposure eXperiment (MPEX) prepares for the start of fabrication, MPEX Project Director Phil Ferguson credits US ITER staff for sharing hard-earned expertise that helped jump-start the design of the MPEX superconducting magnet system.
“Having the US ITER magnet experts here on site allowed them to share their expertise, which we integrated into the design of the MPEX magnet system,” said Ferguson. “That gave us a boost in our starting point, helped us avoid making mistakes, and has enabled us to better deliver on budget and on schedule.”
MPEX is part of ORNL efforts to realize one of the greatest engineering challenges of the 21st century: delivering energy from fusion. Scheduled to start assembly in 2023, MPEX is a next-generation linear plasma device that will essentially provide a testing chamber for scientists to study how plasma interacts with new materials being developed for the extreme conditions of fusion power plants.
“What makes MPEX unique is that researchers will easily be able to swap different materials in and out to analyze them to see how they will hold up under fusion prototypic conditions,” said Robert Duckworth, Group Leader for Fusion Technology, who leads the multi-disciplinary MPEX magnet team.
US ITER has already delivered superconductors to France for one ITER magnet system and is now managing fabrication of the central solenoid, an 18 meter tall, 1000 ton, 13.1 Tesla superconducting magnet composed of six stacked modules. Behind these accomplishments are years of experience.
“We had engineering challenges every step of the way, which were critical to resolve because of the role of the central solenoid magnet in a fusion reactor,” said David Everitt, the US ITER Central Solenoid Project Manager. “The central solenoid is the heartbeat of a tokamak. It kicks the whole thing off, driving the plasma current and then helping contain the plasma.”
MPEX magnet system researchers benefitted from critical tips from their US ITER colleagues from the start.
“A key lesson learned that the US ITER staff shared with us was the importance at the earliest stages of design to focus first on how the magnet system will be integrated with other MPEX systems to deliver the spectrum of conditions of interest to the fusion material community. They found this integrated approach to be key to avoid setbacks and cost overruns,” Duckworth said.
As work moves forward, the MPEX and US ITER teams expect their bond to continue.
“The atmosphere of collaboration here at Oak Ridge is why I appreciate the opportunity to work at this lab,” Duckworth said. “The expertise and willingness of the staff to share lessons learned, along with the tools and facilities that are available here, are what make this collaboration possible – and are what make it fun.”