[en] As the world fusion program approaches the engineering design activity for ITER and possibly construction of a Burning Plasma Experiment (BPX) recent advances in the theory of burning plasmas (increasingly corroborated by tokamak experiments with energetic ions simulating alphas) have led to recognition of several α driven effects beyond the standard expectation of classical slowing down and rippler losses. Foremost amongst these are quantitative questions about the confinement of fast alphas and their coupling efficiency to the bulk plasma, impact of alphas on plasma low and high mode number kinetically modified MHD modes, effect of the α power on the energy confinement time in H-mode in the presence of fully excited Alfven wave turbulence (which may incidentally provide outward He-ash transport) and operating point stability including the α Alfven stability boundaries as self-limiting mechanisms against thermal instability. While these effects are generic for all burning plasmas, the different missions and parameter regimes of PBX and ITER (in its physics and its technology phase) lead to a broad range of α related topics which will be outlined. (author). 7 figs