Vasiliki Anagnostopoulou’s LinkedIn profile says: “I am always eager for any opportunity to hone my skills and knowledge in radiation protection while exploring the power of science communication […]. If you have similar interests, feel free to reach out & connect!” – so that’s what we did.
Hunting Runaway Electrons with an Engineering Grant
Vasiliki Anagnostopoulou is easy to talk to. Lively, engaged, and brilliant, the PhD candidate is currently working at ENEA Frascati. ENEA stands for Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development and is the EUROfusion member from Italy.
Vasiliki has just won a EUROfusion Engineering Grant. It will enable her to develop radiation-hard real-time, detectors to monitor runaway electrons in tokamaks. Those runaways are one of the greatest risks for large fusion devices.
Runaway electrons are extremely fast, high-energy electrons that can form inside a fusion device when the plasma’s electric field suddenly becomes very strong. These electrons can reach relativistic speeds and carry enough energy to damage the inner wall of a fusion reactor if they collide with it. Plasma disruptions, sudden changes in the magnetic field that cause the plasma to collapse, are what generate them.
Signalling a Hit
This year, the ENEA group she is part of is involved in the EUROfusion Work Package JT-60SA (Japanese Torus-60 Super Advanced). During the exploitation of the JT-60SA fusion experiment under the broader approach agreement between Europe and Japan, they study another set of detectors for runaway electrons. The idea is that monitoring systems like scintillators and gas detectors can be installed in tokamaks like JT-60SA to signal the presence of radiation caused by runaway electrons. This is where the inspiration for the grant proposal came from.
Busy in the Front and the Back
“I am so excited about this support from EUROfusion, which is fundamental for myself and many other young researchers in Europe, and I cannot wait to connect the dots and collaborate with more people” she says in a video interview, conducted in the lab, as busy scientists and engineers bustle in the background.
For her project, she will collaborate with people from SiClade Technologies in France, the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Germany, and the Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research at CEA in France – a beautiful example of the international fusion community and the many fascinating topics to explore.
Neutrons, these fascinating little particles
Since 2023, she has been pursuing her doctorate studies in Industrial Engineering at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata” in collaboration with ENEA on a research project on fusion neutron diagnostics for the Divertor Tokamak Test (DTT) facility.
Her journey started with a major in Applied Physics at the National Technical University of Athens. Beginning a fusion-related career in a country where the field is still emerging, posed its challenges, especially in finding a PhD position. But she embraced them, and that openness to new environments even brought her all the way to Japan at the JT-60SA International Fusion School, with the support of EUROfusion.
Free the Knowledge, share the “Donuts”
She is also part of the volunteering team for TokaLab, an open-access virtual tokamak designed for education. It allows students and newcomers to explore how a tokamak works without needing access to a physical fusion device and lets researchers test numerical codes under tokamak-like conditions.
“Free knowledge and sharing it” is what drives Vasiliki. Perhaps it comes from working in environments where collaboration is essential. “The time for scientists to keep their knowledge to themselves is over,” she says.
Science communication is Vasiliki’s passion: “Every scientist should be encouraged to speak about their work – and it can definitely be done in a way that everyone can understand.”
“I often say that we are chasing particles in donut-shaped devices because of the form of the plasma in the tokamak.” Food metaphors always work, she jokes. “Especially in Italy.”
Fusion Famous Like Astronauts
Her main goal is to inspire more students to enter fusion research. “We need the next generation of fusioneers and more female power to enter the field” she emphasizes. Yet she has also noticed that many people immediately lose interest when the word “nuclear” drops in a sentence: “Most people think they don’t understand fusion and that it’s too complex, so they shut down – and that’s sad because the principle is simple and beautiful. I want fusion to be as famous as rockets, astronauts, and space exploration were back in the ’70s.”
Can you imagine a fusion poster on a teenager’s wall? Why not.
The simplest explanation works well: “Fusion researchers are trying to put a little Sun inside a box.” So far, it has been remarkably effective.