Fusion is not fiction says F4E at the “Campus Party” Festival

With over 10,000 attendees, the annual weeklong, 24-hours-a-day technology festival, Campus Party, unites the brightest young minds in technology and science. The festival features over 600 hours of talks, debate, workshops, competitions and hackathons related to science, innovation, digital entertainment and creativity. This year’s event, which took place in Berlin during August, featured F4E’s technical expert, Jesus Izquierdo, who took to the stage with the catchily entitled presentation “Fusion is not fiction”. To an international audience of around 150 attendees, the presentation kicked-off with references to blockbusters such as “Spiderman 2” “The Saint”, “Iron Man” and the Batman film “The Dark Knight Rises” – all films where fusion is an essential part of the storyline. The audience also learnt about the merits of fusion energy and how it can contribute in tomorrow’s energy mix, as well as the progress being made on the ITER project.

That interest is high for fusion and the ITER project is clear – at the end of the presentation came a flurry of questions. In fact, the question time exceeded the presentation time by double! Jesus Izquierdo took the opportunity to further explain, for example, how the heat produced from the fusion process will be transferred to the electrical network by steam, the cost and timeline of the project as well as the safety aspects which are put in place on the ITER site. Interest was also high for Fusion for Energy as an organisation with many of the younger members of the audience eager to learn about F4E studentships and possibilities for recruitment. All in all, a successful event!