Swiss Plasma Center (SPC) is EPFL's plasma physics and 📝fusion research centre in Lausanne, operator of the 📝TCV tokamak and of the SULTAN 📝superconductor test facility at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Villigen.
The centre traces to the Plasma Physics Laboratory established in 1961, which became the Centre de recherches en physique des plasmas (CRPP) in 1968, joined the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne in 1973, moved into its School of Basic Sciences in 2002, and was renamed the Swiss Plasma Center in 2015. Construction of TCV — Tokamak à configuration variable — began in 1992. The machine is built around shaping: its purpose is to produce a wide range of 📝plasma cross-sections in a single 📝tokamak, reaching temperatures up to 100 million degrees Celsius, and EUROfusion recognised it in 2013 as one of three European national machines supporting 📝ITER and 📝DEMO.
SPC's second facility sits outside Lausanne. SULTAN, developed at PSI Villigen in 1992 and operated there by SPC, tests high-current fusion conductors under field, current and temperature conditions matching a machine's operating environment. EPFL states that every major superconducting fusion project — ITER, 📝JT-60SA, 📝SPARC, BEST, CFETR, DTT and the EU DEMO — has qualified its conductors there. SULTAN's present limits are 11 📝tesla and 100 kiloamps; a successor, EDIPO2, is designed for a 15-tesla background field and samples beyond 100 kA, with commissioning expected in 2028.