The 33rd Symposium on Fusion Technology (SOFT 2024)  was held  from September 22 to 27, 2024, in Dublin City University and it served as a major platform for discussions on the latest advancements in fusion technology. The event attracted over 800  scientists from all over the world, and among them about 30 Italian researchers. The symposium was an opportunity to learn about the status of the most important research projects underway worldwide. In particular, the introductory speech by the Director General of ITER, Pietro Barabaschi, illustrated the progress of the ITER project and the challenges it is about to face. Much space was also reserved to the fusion research programs in Europe, USA, China and Japan and to the DTT project, the largest nuclear fusion project currently under construction in Europe after ITER, which was presented through more than 50 contributions (among orals and posters), including 2 invited presentations.

At the conference a DTT contribution was awarded  the second Poster Prize for the work titled “Investigation of the Selective Laser Melting for its Application in the First Wall of the DTT Facility”. The lead author Gabriele De Sano, who collected the prize on behalf of the other authors is a young researcher who is completing his PhD last year and is now employed by the DTT consortium.   Gabriele said “I am proud of the work we have carried out and for the award I have received. The relevance and innovation of the topic were highly appreciated at the conference. I will pursuit the investigation of this manufacturing solution within the design and fabrication activities for the DTT First Wall.“

Furthermore, Alessandro Lampasi, Head of the DTT Power Supply unit, was among the top five candidates for the Innovation Prize for the COURAGEOUS (Contactless power supplies for low-voltage superconducting magnets) project that has been pursued in collaboration with the Universities of Tuscia and Bologna. The project aims at reducing the power losses and the impact on the external grid of the power supplies for superconducting magnets. The proposed solution is based on the concept of flux pump (FP), that is a compact system able to induce currents in superconductors. In particular, COURAGEOUS was focused on a high-temperature superconductor (HTS) linear flux pump system to supply the DTT TF coil at 40 kA achieving an efficiency of 99.8%, with initial application in the Frascati Coil Cold Test Facility.