A special issue of the scientific journal Fusion Engineering & Design presents the state of the art in designing Europe's demonstration fusion power plant DEMO. More than 30 open access articles cover topics from power exhaust to tritium breeding, extraction of high-grade heat from the breeding blanket, remote maintenance for in-vessel components, robust magnet designs, qualified structural and plasma-facing component materials, as well as nuclear safety and integration.
(c) EUROfusion & F4E
When asked whether it is not too early to be thinking about DEMO, Gianfranco Federici and Tony Donné, both from EUROfusion, replied that if the DEMO engineering design efforts start too long after ITER is delivered, a highly skilled and experienced workforce will be lost to other industries, with an unavoidable brain drain and loss of lessons learned. "That is why we focus on attracting talented, enthusiastic people to the field, especially engineers who have a systemic view of the entire plant," said Federici and Donné.
The special issue was published at a live-streamed event in Brussels on 5 July. Also on that day, a video was released on Youtube to attract the engineers of the future.
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