Professor Minh-Quang Tran has been nominated Leader of EFDA (the European Fusion Development Agreement).

Professor Minh-Quang Tran, a full professor at the EPFL, has become "Fusion’s Nº 1" for Europe. He has been nominated Leader of EFDA (the European Fusion Development Agreement). This organisation manages JET (Joint European Torus), the largest fusion experiment in the world, sited in England. It also supervises numerous technology programmes in Europe in support of ITER, the international experimental fusion reactor project, as well as research for future industrial reactors.

As a result, Professor Tran will become one of the leaders of the European preparation for ITER, in addition to his present duties. At present, the European Union and Switzerland, together with Canada, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the USA negotiate on the construction and scientific exploitation of ITER. These partners wish to tackle the challenges of developing controlled fusion as an unlimited source of clean and safe energy, exploiting the mechanism, which powers the stars, including our sun.

The EPFL has been part of the European fusion programme since 1979. The nomination of Minh-Quang Tran underlines the international renown and excellence of the CRPP (Centre de Recherches en Physique des Plasmas). Before him, Professor Francis Troyon, the previous director of the CRPP, had a European role as president of the JET Council in the late 1990’s. The CRPP co-ordinates all the fusion research activities in Switzerland, including the variable configuration tokamak (TCV), which is the largest experimental installation at the EPFL.

Plasmas are composed of electrically charged ions and electrons and are strongly affected by electric and magnetic fields, which change their shape and properties. The CRPP is particularly well known for its experimental studies on the effects of changing the TCV plasma shape. TCV uses novel intense microwave methods to heat the plasmas to 200,000,000ºC. Equally innovative are the numerical simulations of plasmas at the CRPP which are at the very forefront of international research. Under the leadership of Minh-Quang Tran, the CRPP enhanced its work on the technology of fusion, particularly in the fields of microwave generation, superconducting magnets and low activation, high strength structural materials.

Cutaway view of the ITER reactor