Today's talk (Wed. 4/28) is cancelled due to a conflict with a general colloquium at SLAC. It sounds like it will be good, if you can make it I'd recommend going.
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Come to Kavli Auditorium at 12:30 p.m. today to hear ITER Principle Deputy Director General Norbert Holtkamp presenting "The Role of R&D in Large Projects: Projects for R&D: ITER, SNS, the Muon Collider and Others."
Research and Development associated with large science projects paves the way to improvements in technology, performance and cost reduction. Investments in R&D increase the probability of successfully achieving the project's goals. In this presentation a variety of examples will be discussed focusing mainly on two recent construction projects, the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory which was finished in 2006 and ITER, the world's largest Tokamak, which is under construction now in France. In addition an update of the ITER project and its present status will be given. This is particularly interesting example since the R&D results, while largely generated by the countries participating early on in the project (Europe, Japan, Russia and US), now are to be utilized by all seven ITER participants who contribute components to ITER "In kind." Taking a few examples, the presentation will lay out the impact R&D had in the choice of parameters and the risk management associated with that.
