ITER ITA NEWSLETTER
No. 20, FEBRUARY-MARCH 2005

INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY, VIENNA, AUSTRIAISSN 1727–9852

INFORMATION FROM THE EDITOR
On the occasion of Academician E.P. Velikhov’s 70th birthday, Dr. Lev Golubchikov, former ITER Contact
Person of the Russian Federation, conducted the following interview. Academician Velikhov is the Presidentof the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow and has been Member of the ITER Council and the ITER Preparatory
Committee, respectively, since the inception of the project. On behalf of the IAEA, the ITER Office Vienna
extends its best wishes to Academician Velikhov.

FUSION ITER NATIONAL
L.G.: Evgenii Pavlovich, we have the full right to give you the name of ‘founder’ of both the INTOR and theITER processes. In the beginning of May, 1978, in accordance with a decision of the Politburo of the KPSS(Communist Party of the USSR), you were charged to make, at the IAEA in Vienna, on behalf of the USSR,a proposal for the organization and development, on an international basis, of a Project for an Experimental
Thermonuclear Plant. Our country was ready to construct a fusion reactor on the territory of Russia at thattime. That was almost thirty years ago, but construction has not yet begun. People ask the question, “WHENwill fusion work?” To predict the future it is necessary to know at least the recent past. Could you answer
several questions about the first steps and development of international cooperation in fusion?

Academician Velikhov receiving birthday congratulations from President Putin.

E.P.V.: Well, in this case is not so easy to get off lightly…
L.G.: Good. Is there a direct connection between INTOR and ITER?
E.P.V.: The joint work of many scientists and engineers from the Soviet Union, Euratom, Japan and the USA
in the framework of INTOR cooperation during the years 1978–1985 allowed us to compare the results of R&Dfrom the national projects related to a tokamak reactor, to reach agreement on the conceptual design ofINTOR and to determine a list of additional R&D the results of which would influence the technical design ofa reactor. But the main result of this work was the demonstration in practice of the possibility of fruitful joint
work by many dozens of specialists from countries with different languages, cultures, religious customs andsociopolitical organizations. Without taking account of this experience and knowledge of the work, it would bemuch more difficult to organize the joint work on the ITER technical design. And besides, the five volumes
published on the INTOR project are a very good reference source for engineers, researchers, scientists andstudents throughout the world.
L.G.: There were many stages in the INTOR project. Why did the participants not begin to work on thetechnical design of this reactor?
E.P.V.: The reasons were several. One of them is rather subjective, I think.
It was a period of time when a new generation of large tokamaks — TFTR in the USA, JET for Euratom (atCulham in the United Kingdom), JT-60 in Japan and T-15 in the USSR — became ready for operation. And allof them hoped to overcome the ‘Lawson criterion’ (Q > 1) a little earlier than their partners in fusion research.
But to reach this goal has become possible only in the last few years.
L.G.: What prompted Chairman Gorbachev, the leader of the USSR at that time, to propose a broadinternational cooperation to harness thermonuclear energy?
E.P.V.: When he became the leader of the country, Gorbachev understood very well the necessity ofbroadening international cooperation in the modern world. Fusion research was one of the branches ofscience and technology where the Soviet Union could work on equal terms with any country in the world. The
idea was to harness a practically inexhaustible and ecologically acceptable source of energy that would beavailable to all countries, not only for ‘superpowers’. I had been acquainted with Gorbachev since ouruniversity years (he graduated from the law faculty, I from the physical faculty, at practically the same time)and I made use of this situation. I understood that international interest in fusion might help our national fusion
programme, as head of which I was nominated just after the death of Academician Lev Andreevich
Artsimovich in 1973.
In September 1985, during the meeting of Gorbachev with the French President Mitterand, the latter
supported this idea, and this was written in the communiqué on the results of that meeting. Later the sameyear Gorbachev met with US President Reagan, and he, too, agreed to the organization of an international
cooperation in fusion energy. In December 1985, after a speech by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of theUSSR, A.A. Gromyko, before the United Nations General Assembly, this great idea found general
understanding and we in the Soviet Union began to receive proposals from other countries willing toparticipate in this endeavour.
L.G.: But the agreement on the ITER technical design was signed by only four Parties, the same thatparticipated in the INTOR activity and in the ITER Conceptual Design Activities. Why?
E.P.V.: After long and not so simple negotiations, it was decided to begin the ITER activity with specialists
from only those countries that had good experience in thermonuclear research, namely the USSR (Russia),
the USA, the EU and Japan. I was nominated as the Chair of the ITER Council, and Dr. M. Yoshikawa become
Co-Chair. After six years of very hard work the technical design was developed. Based on the scientific dataand technical possibilities existing at that time, there was a real possibility to begin the construction phase ofITER, IF…if in the USA there had not begun some political intrigue. It was forbidden to US scientists toparticipate in the ITER activity and the word ‘ITER’ became taboo in the USA. The ITER Co-Centre in San
Diego was closed.

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In spite of a rather hard situation after this US decision, so inexplicable from a logical point of view, the project
has managed to survive and continued up to the end of 2001 working with the goal of diminishing the cost of
the reactor without substantial changes to its principal parameters and of getting agreement on a site for thepossible construction of ITER. Canada joined the ITER activity and in June 2001 officially proposed a site for
ITER construction near Lake Ontario. It was not only a very good place for ITER. This official proposal of asite allowed the participating countries to begin official negotiations for preparation of the new Agreement on
the Construction of ITER. We should be grateful to our Canadian colleagues for this bold step.
L.G.: Well, what next? Negotiations have been continuing for four years…
E.P.V.: During this period of time many events have happened. After the beginning of the negotiations on thefuture of ITER, the USA came back into the project. China and the Republic of Korea also became participantsin the negotiations, and Canada left the negotiating table because of financial problems. The selection of asite for ITER construction is in stalemate and is delaying a successful end of the negotiations, because threeParties (Russia, China and the EU) support France, another three (Japan, the USA and the Republic ofKorea) support Japan. Now France and Japan are each fighting for their ITER site — Cadarache in Franceand Rokkasho in Japan. They have failed to reach a consensus on the basis of mutual interests and all therest have to wait. The problem is very serious and quite possibly the decision can only be found by the ‘Big 8’
by means of mutual concessions.
L.G.: When may we expect the decision on the site?
V.E.P.: I think it will happen this year. Compromises are possible. But time is flying. An energy and ecology
crisis is obvious even to the person in the street. The sooner we answer the question — FUSION ENERGY:TO BE OR NOT TO BE? —– the sooner we will manage not only to resolve global ecological, energy andeconomic problems, but also to avoid serious sociopolitical perturbation in our unstable world.
L.G.: What do you think about the possibility of other countries joining the ITER process besides the presentsix?
E.P.V.: It must happen, sooner or later. Fusion energy is the global future of humankind “by definition”, and it
will influence the fate of all countries and peoples. That is why the leaders of my country considered andcontinue to consider that the ITER project should be under the auspices of the IAEA and the United Nations.

Academician Velikhov in discussion with President Putin.

3L.G.: In his time, Artsimovich, to the question, “When will the use of fusion energy begin?”, answered, “Onlywhen it is necessary to humankind…and maybe a little earlier.” What do you think, has this time come?
E.P.V.: I think this time is a little late in coming.
L.G.: In one interview, to the question,“Is it possible to call ITER the main project of your life?”, you answered,“Probably, yes.” Have you changed your mind?
E.P.V.: No, my opinion is still stronger.

A NEW DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR ITER
by H.-W. Bartels, ITER Information Technology Office Head, ITER Joint Work Site Garching
Introduction
Since October 2004, ITER has a new document management system called IDM (ITER DocumentManagement), which supersedes the old IDoMS. The old system served ITER for over 10 years but became
outdated considering the rapid improvements in software and web technologies. The new system is designed
to be the basis for the upcoming construction phase of ITER. A review of a range of potential solutions, someof them commercial and some of them open source, preceded the implementation of the new system. A
complete in-house development was excluded from the beginning since the risks and cost involved are toolarge. As a result of the review it became clear that all solutions would require significant efforts to customize
them for ITER project needs. Based on this conclusion it was decided to develop a pilot version of the newsystem with the open source web application framework ZOPE, which is a powerful and feature-rich software
to build secure and flexible web applications. The success of this pilot led to the adoption of the new systemfor production work by the project in October 2004.

Software used for the implementation
The implementation with ZOPE was possible with a moderate effort because this system has the following
built-in features:— security integrated from the beginning;— an advanced and fast search engine;— built-in Object Database which provides full support for secure transactions;— connection to external relational databases (e.g. Oracle, MySQL) is possible;— separation of:— data (binaries);— meta-data (date, author, etc.);— presentation (dynamic web pages);— logic (workflow, i.e. approval process);— fully customizable (general purpose computer language Python).
The most important features of IDM are:— use through an internet browser from any platform;— powerful search capability;— easy and intuitive use;
— integrated workflow with:— signing, review, and approval (electronic signatures);— ability to include and log comments;— control of versions;— fine-grained security settings can control access to various parts of the system.

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Basic user interface
The user interface (Figure 1) is similar to that most users know from the Windows Explorer or similar file andfolder navigation tools. There are various types of folders which are differentiated by colour or name. A greytraining folder is available for users to familiarize themselves with the system. All content in this folder older
than 3 months will be automatically deleted. A yellow ‘Users’ folder provides individual folders for all IDM users
which are a good starting place for storing documents in IDM. Content in the ‘Users’ folder and all other nontraining folders will never be deleted. The blue ‘Baseline’ folder is a special folder which is designed torepresent the current state of the ITER project. Therefore its content is dynamic and will change with time. Thestructure of the folders there maps the ITER work breakdown structure. Links in the baseline folder canbecome obsolete and are then deleted. The documents behind those links will never be deleted and canalways be retrieved via the search function. All other (green) folders are of general interest to the ITER projectand contain content which is expected to be stable over time. Examples are documentation about old baseline
designs and documentation about meetings (minutes and presentations).
An important role in IDM is played by the Responsible Officers of each folder. A typical example would be the‘Design Integration’ folder, where the head of the design integration division would be the responsible officer.
The responsible officers can:— delete links to documents in their area;— set security permissions (read and write);— confirm the relevance of documents in the ‘Baseline’ folder on request of the ITER management;— delegate authority: define new Responsible Officers in subfolders.
In future, another feature will be implemented which will allow Responsible Officers to define new local groups
at the folder level and make appropriate security settings for them. This feature will enable the creation ofworking groups across many fields without the need to interact with IDM administrators.
A user manual is provided both as a Word document and online. It is kept updated as new features areimplemented. Users can send feature requests to the IDM administrators and a web page lists all featurerequests. Another link points to the IDM development page in which a log is kept about improvements to thesystem.

Working with documents
The most fundamental feature of IDM is that it allows all registered users (including external collaborators) toupload documents into the system. Users can select an appropriate location in the folder structure where they
have write access. In this folder they are offered a button called ‘New File’ which guides them through theupload process. They are able to browse the local file system to select a file for uploading and they can fill out
some meta-data information like the title of the document, reviewers, approver etc. During the upload processa unique document number is generated which can be pasted within the document before the upload iscomplete.
Once a document is uploaded into the system, it can be routed through a standard QA workflow. The firstaction - review - is started once the author (plus co-authors) sign the document electronically. Reviewers cangive comments to the documents and make a recommendation for approval. The author can reply to thecomments. Finally a user who is in the line management of the (main) author can approve the document.
Approvers can also add comments, add reviewers and delegate the approval to another person. Reviewers
or approvers can lock documents. A locked document will remain in its status until the lock is removed.
Approvers can also change authors - useful when new revisions of project documents are produced after theoriginal authors have left the project.
New versions of the document can be uploaded at any time. The system takes care of the numbering of thevarious versions. There will be always one ‘current’ version, which will be the version with the highest level ofapproval. If several documents have the same level of approval, the newest of them will become the currentversion. An exception to this rule is that locked documents remain the current versions until the lock isremoved. Older versions will be flagged as obsolete but kept in the database and newer versions will be5

flagged as ‘draft’ versions. A new version must go through the same approval process as earlier versions toreach the same level of approval.

User database
Usernames and passwords are kept in the same repository as used for normal login into desktop computers.
This is achieved by using a general standard — LDAP — for the user and group management. This way aseparate user administration is avoided and the ITER users do not need to remember yet another usernameand password.
For external collaborators a low level of entry into IDM — read only access — is provided by a standard
username and password distributed by the ITER International Team or Home Team members. External users
requiring write permission can be added to the pool of IDM users once this is requested by an ITERInternational Team member who acts as their sponsor.

Real life experience
IDM went into production in October 2004. Since then the system has been running stably and the amount ofdocuments is increasing steadily. Within the first 4 month about 1000 documents have been stored into thesystem. External collaborators from China, EU, Japan, Korea, Russia and the US have been registered as
active users of the system.
Shortly after the introduction of IDM is became clear that one important use was not covered: how to upload
documents to IDM which are of significant importance to the ITER project but which are authored byresearchers now outside the ITER team. It seemed unrealistic to always give write access in these cases.
Therefore a new upload procedure was developed quickly in which an IDM user can act as a ‘signatory’, i.e.
they can sign a document into IDM without being the author. These documents can then even be approved
inside the ITER Team to give them a formal status. This new route of uploading documents is currently usedvery often. This example demonstrates the flexibility which was gained by basing IDM on an open source
platform. This allowed fast and flexible modification of the system to accommodate the special needs of theITER project which would hardly be covered by any standard commercial system. Customizing commercial
software systems is also possible but with large penalties in terms of cost, planning and schedule, anddependence on outside contractors and “black box” systems.
A current activity is to import the legacy documents accumulated in the old ITER document management
system. This involves some effort to recognize old file formats and make them readable in the current
operating systems. We expect that the bulk of this import will be finished in February 2005.
Considerable effort is also underway to quickly import recent documentation updates into the ITER system,to act as the springboard for future modifications as construction approaches.

6Figure 1. Basic IDM screen which appears after login into IDM. The user can navigate as on Windows Explorer
by opening the folder hierarchy or clicking on folders. An alternative method to locate documents is to use asearch word or phrase which will scan all meta-data and an index of the full text of Word and PDF documents.

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Printed by the IAEA in Austria
March 200505-10741

Items to be considered for inclusion in the ITER ITA Newsletter should be submitted to C. Basaldella, ITER Office, IAEA,Wagramer Strasse 5, P.O. Box 100, A-1400 Vienna, Austria, or Facsimile: +43 1 2633832, or e-mail: c.basaldella@iaea.org(phone +43 1 260026392).