Preparations are underway to put the world’s largest stellarator into operation

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After years of crunching numbers, designing plans, manufacturing components and assembling modules, the fusion device is due to enter a new phase in May, bringing scientists another step closer to generating electricity using the same principle as the sun. It all began in April 2005: slowly but surely, the special gripper slides and rotates a magnetic coil weighing six tonnes onto an unconventionally shaped steel vessel. The only sound to be heard in the assembly hall apart from the steering commands is the whirring of the crane. Under the watchful eyes of their colleagues, the assembly team threads the large coil onto the vessel, millimetre by millimetre, with merely a finger’s breadth of space between the two elements. After three hours the assembly test is complete: “The technology and the tools work, and the personnel is well-trained,” concludes Lutz Wegener, Head of the Assembly Department, brimming with satisfaction. The solenoid and the vessel were the first components of the Wendelstein 7-X fusion device to come to Greifswald from the different manufacturing plants across Europe. Greifswald, a university town in Western Pomerania, is home to a sub-institute established by the MPI for Plasma Physics (IPP, located in Garching, Bavaria) in 1994 in

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