FORNL has third talk on international thermonuclear project on Tuesday

Friends of Oak Ridge National Laboratory will have its third talk on the U.S. ITER project on Tuesday. ITER is the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, and it will be constructed at Cadarache, France, and is expected to be completed within 10 years.

The Friends of ORNL lecture starts at noon Tuesday at the University of Tennessee Resource Center. It will feature Graeme Murdoch, who will discuss U.S. ITER non-nuclear systems.

“The United States has joined with China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, and Russia to construct and operate ITER, a full-scale, 500 megawatt experimental fusion device,” a press release said. “U.S. Contributions to ITER include hardware (with supporting research and development and design), personnel (U.S. engineers and scientists) to the ITER site in Cadarache, and cash contributions to the ITER organization. US-supplied hardware includes magnets, blankets, diagnostics, tritium processing, ion cyclotron and electron cyclotron heating and current drive systems, pellet fueling, and more conventional systems such as cooling water and electrical power systems.”

ITER is a large-scale project that presents many engineering challenges, the press release said.

It said Murdoch has more than 27 years’ worth of experience in engineering design and management, working in a projects and particle accelerator environment beginning at ISIS in the U.K. and more recently at the Spallation Neutron Source at ORNL. During his 13 years at SNS, he led the Mechanical Systems Group in the assembly, installation, and commissioning of the accelerator mechanical systems and more recently managed the design of accelerator, target, and neutron instrument beam lines.

The release said Murdoch is a corporate member of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers and a registered chartered professional engineer with the Engineering Council in the U.K., and he has a bachelor of engineering degree from the University of West England, Bristol.

The New Yorker published a story on ITER titled “A Star in a Bottle” by Raffi Khatchadourian in their March 3 edition.

The UT Resource Center is at 1201 Oak Ridge Turnpike between Taco Bell and Applebee’s at the intersection of the Turnpike and Rutgers Avenue.

Here is the meeting agenda:

• 11 a.m.—socializing and coffee
• 11:30 a.m.—lunch (catered by the Soup Kitchen cost $8)
• 11:50 a.m.—business items (if any)
• 12 p.m.—lecture begins
• 12:45 p.m.—Q&A
• 1 p.m.—adjourn

For more information, maps, or directions, go to www.fornl.info/ or contact Connor Matthews at (865) 482-2382 or (865) 705-5890.