Scientists from our top-rated Physics department have played a crucial role in verifying the quality of specialist materials destined for the magnets of ITER.
ITER is the world's largest and most ambitious fusion energy experiment.
How fusion works?
Fusion is the process that powers the Sun, and scientists believe it could provide an almost limitless supply of clean energy here on Earth.
ITER, currently being built in southern France, is the most ambitious international project yet to test this idea.
At its heart are enormous magnets, some of the strongest ever made, which will confine super-hot plasma so that fusion reactions can take place.
For these magnets to work, they rely on thousands of kilometres of superconducting wire.
This special wire can carry huge electrical currents with no resistance, but it must be manufactured and tested to very high standards.
Superconductor quality test
We were chosen to set up one of Europe's official testing laboratories.
Led by Professor Damian Hampshire and Dr Mark Raine, the team developed new ways to process and measure the wires.
These tests confirmed which wires met ITER's strict standards and also showed how testing itself can be improved.
The results revealed that independent tests on two similar wires can provide the same confidence as more expensive repeat tests on a single wire.
Over the course of the project, they tested more than 5,500 samples and carried out around 13,000 separate measurements.
A step towards clean energy
The results confirmed that the European-produced strands met ITER's demanding performance standards.
The work also identified ways to improve manufacturing and testing processes, such as tighter control over the purity of gases used during heat treatment.
Once complete, ITER's magnets will produce some of the strongest steady magnetic fields ever created, enabling fusion reactions that could deliver abundant, low-carbon energy without long-lived radioactive waste.
