ITER ("The Way" in Latin) is one of the most ambitious energy projects in the world today.

In southern France, 35 nations* are collaborating to build the world's largest tokamak, a magnetic fusion device that has been designed to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy based on the same principle that powers our Sun and stars.

The experimental campaign that will be carried out at ITER is crucial to advancing fusion science and preparing the way for the fusion power plants of tomorrow.

ITER will be the first fusion device to produce net energy. ITER will be the first fusion device to maintain fusion for long periods of time. And ITER will be the first fusion device to test the integrated technologies, materials, and physics regimes necessary for the commercial production of fusion-based electricity.

Thousands of engineers and scientists have contributed to the design of ITER since the idea for an international joint experiment in fusion was first launched in 1985. The ITER Members—China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States —are now engaged in a 35-year collaboration to build and operate the ITER experimental device, and together bring fusion to the point where a demonstration fusion reactor can be designed.

Power plants today rely either on fossil fuels, nuclear fission, or renewable sources like wind or water. Whatever the energy source, the plants generate electricity by converting mechanical power, such as the rotation of a turbine, into electrical power. In a coal-fired steam station, the combustion of coal turns water into steam and the steam in turn drives turbine generators to produce electricity.

The tokamak is an experimental machine designed to harness the energy of fusion. Inside a tokamak, the energy produced through the fusion of atoms is absorbed as heat in the walls of the vessel. Just like a conventional power plant, a fusion power plant will use this heat to produce steam and then electricity by way of turbines and generators.

The heart of a tokamak is its doughnut-shaped vacuum chamber. Inside, under the influence of extreme heat and pressure, gaseous hydrogen fuel becomes a plasma—the very environment in which hydrogen atoms can be brought to fuse and yield energy. The charged particles of the plasma can be shaped and controlled by the massive magnetic coils placed around the vessel; physicists use this important property to confine the hot plasma away from the vessel walls. The term "tokamak" comes to us from a Russian acronym that stands for "toroidal chamber with magnetic coils."

First developed by Soviet research in the late 1960s, the tokamak has been adopted around the world as the most promising configuration of magnetic fusion device. ITER will be the world's largest tokamak—twice the size of the largest machine currently in operation, with ten times the plasma chamber volume.

Fusion is the energy source of the Sun and stars. In the tremendous heat and gravity at the core of these stellar bodies, hydrogen nuclei collide, fuse into heavier helium atoms and release tremendous amounts of energy in the process.

Twentieth-century fusion science identified the most efficient fusion reaction in the laboratory setting to be the reaction between two hydrogen isotopes, deuterium (D) and tritium (T). The DT fusion reaction produces the highest energy gain at the "lowest" temperatures.

Three conditions must be fulfilled to achieve fusion in a laboratory: very high temperature (on the order of 150,000,000° Celsius); sufficient plasma particle density (to increase the likelihood that collisions do occur); and sufficient confinement time (to hold the plasma, which has a propensity to expand, within a defined volume).

At extreme temperatures, electrons are separated from nuclei and a gas becomes a plasma—often referred to as the fourth state of matter. Fusion plasmas provide the environment in which light elements can fuse and yield energy.

In a tokamak device, powerful magnetic fields are used to confine and control the plasma.

ITER will include one of the hottest places in the universe—the vacuum vessel housing the 150-million-degree- Celsius plasma—as well as one of the coldest places in the universe; the magnets that will confine and control that plasma must be kept at about four kelvins (–269 degrees C). Separating the two will be a beryllium-coated steel “blanket” to shield the sections from each other, which will attach to the vacuum vessel’s interior wall via stub keys, currently covered by yellow caps to keep off dust.

ITER’s tokamak will be the biggest ever built, twice the size of the largest currently operating. The base of the machine was lowered into the chamber in July 2020, marking the beginning of the project’s assembly at the site in the south of France. The site is funded by Europe, which is paying for nearly half of the total cost of the project; Europe’s contribution is managed by Fusion for Energy.

The superconducting magnets in the reactor can work only at supercold temperatures near absolute zero, which will be maintained by liquid helium circulating through cryogenic pumps. Operators control the system via a complex set of hand valves (top) based on local readings of pressure, temperature and flow. The finished cryogenic plant, built by contractor Air Liquide (bottom), will be the world’s largest helium-refrigeration unit.

ITER’s fusion plasma will be encased and contained by a nest of magnets, including six ring-shaped superconducting poloidal magnets (shown here) that will pile on top of one another horizontally to surround the plasma. In addition, 18 toroidal field coils will encircle the machine vertically, and one large central solenoid will sit in the middle, forming the largest superconducting magnet system ever built. Superconductors allow electric current to flow without resistance, enabling electrons to move freely to create intense magnetic fields.

The fundament currency of our universe is energy.

ITER Problems & Vulnerabilities

Some potential failures seen by astrophysicst Mr. Jean-Pierre Petit

1. "All the tokamaks in the world including Tore Supra and JET have become ungovernable under the effect of extremely varying causes "
2. "the disruptions …spawn forces that are capable of distorting the parietal structures into wisps of straw"
3. :" lightening produced there will inevitably reach 15 million Amperes (150 million amperes on its successor DEMO). Impacts of such power will perforate the vacuum vessel. The Beryllium layer …will vanish and disperse the materials it is made of--- along with the tritium at the same time--- which is radiotoxic and confined in the chamber"
4: "the hope that one day a tokamak can operate with no disruption is as senseless as imagining the sun with no solar disruptions, a weather report exempt of any wind or snow or cooking oneself a casserole filled with boiling water that produces no flurry"