Russia held the 52nd International Conference on Plasma Physics and Controlled Thermonuclear Fusion from March 15–21 in the Zvenigorod district of Moscow, an annual joint effort sponsored by Rosatom, the Kurchatov Institute and the Russian Academy of Sciences. Numerous papers were presented during the week by the researchers who attended.
Speaking to the public, Mikhail Kovalchuk, the head of the Kurchatov Institute, noted how Russia has always been an important contributor to the major international projects in this area, pointing to ITER, the XFEL free electron laser project in Hamburg, as well as the creation of CERN.
He pointed to the renewal of Russia’s historic fusion program with the establishment of the TM-15MD facility at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow in 2021, which produced its first high-temperature plasma two years later. The next step, he noted, was to create a thermonuclear neutron source with which they can irradiate thorium-232 in order to produce the fissile isotope uranium-233, creating fuel for a new generation of reactors.
