Fusion division of IUVSTA. Report presented to the Trienniel Scientific Highlights Seminar (September 1991)

The Fusion Division of IUVSTA is concerned with developments in the fields of magnetic-confinement fusion device vacuum systems and interactions between the plasma and fusion device components. Magnetic-confinement fusion devices include tokamaks, stellarators, reversed-field pinches, etc., but the past few years have seen an increased concentration of funding on tokamaks. The planned device which should reach the plasma conditions necessary for a useful fusion power reactor (ITER) is also a tokamak. When the last triennial report was presented in 1988, the most notable development of the previous years was the concept of the 'all-carbon' machine in which the only material visible to the plasma was carbon. The scientific developments in this field reported here can be summarized as the explanation of problems experienced with the 'all-carbon' scenario, and the development of new strategies to combat these problems, based on including boron in the first wall surfaces or, in the independent strategy adopted by JET, using beryllium components and coating. (author)