WHY ITER

The world is starting to face up to increasing energy demands, ever scarcer resources and a growing awareness of the dangers of global warming and the environmental risks of continuing to burn fossil fuels intensively. In this context, the international ITER project (ITER means "the path" in Latin) is a key step in developing a new energy source – fusion energy.

In the natural world, fusion is the energy source that has been powering the sun and stars for several billion years. The temperature and density in the heart of the sun are so great that hydrogen atoms are fused together, releasing high levels of energy in the form of light and heat. Research teams have been using machines called "tokamaks" to try to reproduce the same reaction on earth. ITER will be the next step in this research drive, the first facility to simultaneously provide all the conditions required for a plasma "burn" – density, temperature and confinement time. This international project is a joint venture between China, the USA, the Russian Federation, India, Japan, South Korea and the European Union, which together account for more than half the world's population.

Further research will be required in order to design the components for a production reactor. In particular, structural materials will require further development and characterisation. All the components will then be put together in a pre-industrial demonstration facility (DEMO), which could generate electricity by 2040.br>

ITER is a massive step-up in scale for the engineers and researchers, 3 to 5 times larger than its predecessors, Tore Supra , at the Cadarache site, JET in Culham, near Oxford, England and JT 60 in Japan. Tore Supra provided a demonstration of plasma control for a record six minutes. Le JET achieved a 16 MW fusion reaction power and maintained it for approximately one minute. JT 60 broke the plasma temperature record in 1996, reaching more than 200 million degrees centigrade. The aim of ITER is to use 50 MW input energy to achieve a 500 MW fusion reaction, producing ten times more energy than is supplied, and then to maintain the reaction for several minutes. This is a key step along the path to developing an industrial-scale fusion reactor for the energy needs of the future. Researchers across the world are working together to crack the remaining technological challenges involving various components, particularly in the fields of materials and robotics.

ITER will make fusion history as the world's first research facility to combine technological achievements developed in parallel in Europe (at TORE SUPRA in France and JET in the UK) and throughout the world (at the JT-60 facility in Japan and the TFTR reactor in the USA, amongst others).