Hello, it’s December.
The final season for master’s and doctoral dissertations in each laboratory is approaching, and you must be busy every day. In this blog, reports on the resumption of face-to-face conferences and business trips have been uploaded from each laboratory, and it feels like the busy academic conference season is back.
Tanabe will also be writing mainly about business trip reports this time.
From October to December, the Ono-I-Tanabe Lab will be dispatched to APS-DPP (USA, Spokane) in October, to joint research partner Tokamak Energy (UK, Oxford) in early November, and in late November to Plasma-DPP. The Fusion Society (Toyama) followed by the ICPP (Gyeongju, Korea) from the following week to early December. There are many photos that are not beautiful due to camera shake, etc., but I will paste them just for the atmosphere.
APS-DPP is the American Physical Society, and before COVID-19, more than 2,000 plasma-related people from around the world gathered, making it the world’s largest conference in the industry. Online participation is also possible). In the United States, it seems that most of the people in the city and inside the venue have returned to normal times without wearing masks. It was an academic conference that made me feel like I was back in the world (2 photos shown).
The most eye-catching session during the conference was the “Public-Private Partnerships for Fusion Energy” session, where a large number of nuclear fusion venture companies from around the world exhibited. ・Most methods such as mirror, spherical tokamak (ST), spheromak, FRC, Z-pinch, laser, etc. were covered, and there were many presentations from ventures with an investment of over 10 billion yen (nuclear fusion rocket, plasma thruster, etc.) There are also companies that apply it as a method). The session was full every day, and the venue was full of people standing next to each other, as if social distancing was a thing of the past. The FRC method TAE has been famous for a long time, but recently, Commonwealth Fusion Systems (MIT-affiliated) has attracted more investment than TAE (200 billion yen scale), and ventures are appearing in the classic Tokamak method. Tokamak Energy, which we are collaborating with in our laboratory, is still inferior to the two companies in terms of budget scale, but has reached a scale of 30 billion yen. Compared to 10 years ago, when the focus was on skeptical views of venture fusion, the company has become more proficient as a company, including being selected as an invited speaker, and has accumulated achievements combined with highly reliable data. It was an academic conference where I could feel that the way people view ventures is changing.
The third photo shows the preliminary coordination and inspection including the student dispatch plan associated with the Tokamak Energy collaboration (early November). Tanabe will also be dispatched to the site for a few months from next year, but unlike the university’s equipment, it is necessary to make various advance adjustments in order to use the limited ports of the vacuum equipment, so we consulted him on the arrangements and other matters. The photo shows Mr. Ono talking with the local staff. The detailed story was introduced by Mr. Ono the other day, so here is a simple explanation.
The 4th and 5th pictures are back to the conference report again, and the Plasma and Nuclear Fusion Society was held in late November, and the ICPP (International Congress on Plasma Physics) was held in Korea the following week. Since South Korea is in the same Asian region, masks were still required, but the banquet was resumed. At face-to-face conferences, even outside of the presentation time, we had discussions with acquaintances and speakers that we happened to find while walking around the venue. Then, I feel that this is the good thing about meeting face-to-face, which was difficult (sometimes I happened to find an interesting presentation while passing by, so it was quite difficult online).
The Plasma and Nuclear Fusion Society has not yet resumed events that involve eating and drinking, but there was a resumption of the society’s famous soccer tournament. It was just before the World Cup team’s match against Germany, and the organizers were quite unreasonable, saying, “45 minutes half (90 minutes), the whole court, everyone, please do your best.” all over!). A group of students, from young students to prominent professors in their 60s, ran around energetically, whipping up their dull bodies due to lack of exercise, which is usually centered on laboratory life. There were about 30 participants, so there were only 15 people in each team, so we could only change a few people. I don’t know… The person who ran the most than anyone was Kenmochi-sensei, who used to be in Saito Lab. He was in charge of the NIFS errands and was in charge of refereeing, so he ran for 90 minutes without taking turns… Thank you very much for your hard work.
The World Cup just started in a timely fashion, and Germany and Spain defeated Germany and Spain. It is around this time that I am glued to the TV while realizing that. This blog may be updated after the next war, but let’s do our best in each season after this while gaining courage from our success!
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