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Jozef Ongena, Member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts 24/04/2026 - 12h00 | Conference Lunch SEII

Déjeuner Conférence organisé par la Société Européenne des Ingénieurs et des Industriels (SEII).

Jozef Ongena
Member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts

« Nuclear fusion, a promising future energy source. Status and prospects »


There is a need to develop additional technologies for generating electricity (and energy in general) in an environmentally friendly way. A promising option is nuclear fusion, a technique currently under active development, which is explained using three didactic experiments.

The talk will outline how magnetically confined plasmas can achieve the conditions required for net energy gain. Key parameters—temperature, density, and confinement time—will be discussed in the context of the Lawson criterion. The experimental approaches under investigation in magnetic fusion worldwide, tokamaks and stellarators, and recent results will be highlighted. Recent results on inertial fusion, obtained in the US a few years ago, will also be included.

In light of the current chaotic political debate about our energy future and the extremely high energy prices—partly caused by geopolitical issues—the aim is to provide the audience with the latest information on the promises and future of nuclear fusion research.


BIOGRAPHY :
• 1980: Master’s degree in Science, Physics group at Ghent University (RUG)
• 1985: PhD in Physics in the Department of Applied Physics (Faculty of Applied Sciences, Ghent University)
• Since 1999: Research Director of the Laboratory for Plasma Physics at the Royal Military Academy: research on nuclear fusion devices around the world such as TEXTOR (in Jülich), JET (in Culham), DIII-D (in San Diego, USA), TFTR (in Princeton, USA), Tore Supra (in Cadarache, France), ASDEX Upgrade (Max Planck Institute in Garching near Munich), and Wendelstein 7-X (Max Planck Institute in Greifswald)
• 1999-2010: Taskforce leader at JET (Joint European Torus, near Oxford, currently the largest fusion machine in the world), including work on plasma heating studies and operational scenarios for ITER, the new international fusion reactor under construction in southern France
• 2010-present: Project leader for the design and construction of the Ion Cyclotron Resonance Heating system (2 megawatts) for the stellarator Wendelstein 7-X
• Since 2012: Chair of the Energy Group of the European Physical Society
• Since 2013: President of the Belgian Physical Society
• 2016: Awarded the “EPS Achievement Award” for his significant long-term contributions to the society and his effective promotion of physics within the community and to policymakers, boosting EPS’s impact
• 2019: Awarded the Landau-Spitzer Award (together with Yevgen Kazakov from his lab and two colleagues from MIT Boston): a prestigious prize from the American and European Physical Societies for groundbreaking theoretical and experimental work on ion cyclotron heating of fusion devices in an EU–USA collaboration


INFOS :
• Organisé par la S.E.I.I.
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• Accueil et apéritif : 12h ; Déjeuner : 12h30 ; Conférence + questions-réponses : 13h30

link : http://www.seii.org