#EDM standing for EDL Demonstrator Module

[g4laxy-drag0n]

Scientists torturing backronyms/acronyms happens a lot, actually (see my tags for examples)

Backronyms

Physicists suck at naming things (I can say this because I'm a MechE and I have had to deal with so many physicists), but occasionally they have a stroke of brilliance. Like, a friend of mine worked on a dark matter detector called DarkSide. That's so goofy that it wraps back around to good.

Anyway, there's this superconducting fusion reactor in france called WEST. It's notable for having first-wall shielding tiles (the innermost surface of the vacuum chamber, directly facing the fusion plasma) entirely made of tungsten.

There are a lot of materials used for plasma-facing components – tungsten, molybdenum, graphite, beryllium, various composites and combinations of the above – but it's pretty rare for a reactor to go full tungsten. It can take extremely high temperatures, but it's brittle and expensive, and "high-Z" (high molecular weight) impurities in the plasma cause their own issues. So, the main purpose of WEST is to investigate the viability of an all-tungsten first wall and divertor.

To that end, they tortured an acronym until they got it to work:

Tungsten Environment in Steady-state Tokamak

Or "WEST"

Get it?

GEW IW??