Friday lecture: Man’s quest for fusion, the role of ITER

A member of the technical staff at ITER, a magnetic fusion device in southern France, will discuss man’s quest for fusion and the role of ITER in a Friday evening lecture in Oak Ridge.

The lecture starts at 6 p.m. Friday, May 20, at the American Museum of Science and Energy. It will be by Mark Henderson, member of the Technical Staff, ITER Organization in St. Paul-les-Durrance, France.

Henderson will provide a first-hand account of the wide scope of technologies involved in operation of the ITER tokamak (the magnetic fusion device), as well as the current status of design, development, and construction of the experimental fusion facility, a press release said. ITER is the only fusion device in the world that is presently being designed to achieve a burning plasma of hydrogen isotopes.

Henderson acquired a doctorate in plasma physics in 1991 with his thesis on the design, construction, and initial operation of the Compact Auburn Torsatron, the press release said. He performed a post-doctorate at the Center for Research in Plasma Physics (CRPP) in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he participated in the design, construction, and operation of the microwave heating system on the variable configuration tokamak (TCV) at the Swiss Plasma Center.

Henderson became a permanent scientist at TCV, working on the microwave system and associated experiments. In 2004, he proposed an alternative design for the ITER microwave launching antenna, which was accepted.

In 2008, he left CRPP for ITER to be in charge of the development of microwave heating system, the press release said.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory hosts US ITER, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science project. Partner labs are Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and Savannah River National Laboratory. The United States is a partner nation in ITER, an unprecedented international collaboration of scientists and engineers working to design, construct, and assemble a burning plasma experiment that can demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion power for the commercial power grid.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s American Museum of Science and Energy is located at 300 South Tulane Avenue in Oak Ridge. It is open Monday to Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m.

More information will be added as it becomes available.