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In the countryside of southern France lies a sprawling industrial complex where scientists and engineers from around the world have come together to build the world’s largest fusion reactor ever: a donut-shaped vacuum chamber designed to contain temperatures ten times higher than the core of the sun.
At an estimated cost of $22 billion, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor is the world’s biggest bet on fusion energy: a project so massive that longtime geopolitical rivals have pooled their resources to share its risks and potential rewards.
ITER’s central solenoid (left) is the world’s largest magnet. It will play a key role in initiating and maintaining fusion reactions at ITER.
As Laban Koblentz, senior strategic advisor at ITER, put it: “For China and Russia to join forces with the United States and Europe, and add Korea, India and Japan – that is either genius or madness.”
Controlled fusion reactions produce millions of times more energy than burning fossil fuels, and four times more energy than the reactions that power conventional nuclear power plants – without the risk of meltdowns, long-term radioactive waste and carbon emissions. All humans have to do is create the right conditions for this to happen, but that is much easier said than done.
Watch this: 10 times hotter than the sun: inside the world’s largest fusion reactor
Containing ITER’s 150 million degree Celsius plasma will require superconducting magnets that stay just a few degrees above absolute zero. To make this possible, engineers must place one of the hottest environments on record next to one of the coldest, with a thin heat shield separating them.
Cracks in the tubes of this heat shield were discovered in 2020, along with deformations caused by welding and disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in a years-long delay in the ITER timeline and the need for an additional $5 billion to cover repair costs. Meanwhile, private nuclear fusion companies have multiplied, and many hope to overtake ITER in achieving major advances.
The cracks in ITER’s heat shields were part of a series of setbacks that led to a years-long delay and a $5 billion cost increase.
Despite the pressure and criticism resulting from these overruns and delays, everyone I met at ITER talked about the project like an open book. “This is a publicly funded project,” said Javier Artola, a scientist working on modeling the behavior of ITER plasma. “It’s knowledge of the world.”
A publicly funded project like ITER helps reduce the risks of the research and development needed to integrate on a commercial scale, making it easier for private companies to place their big bets on the technology. Every problem ITER solves is one less problem for private integrators to solve.
ITER scientist Javier Artola points out the different components that power the largest tokamak ever built.
Every member state of the ITER Agreement (which includes more than 30 countries) will have access to all the science that emerges from ITER, and the construction of ITER itself is developing a global fusion energy supply chain. If Member States agree to share this information with them, even non-Member States may benefit from the science provided by ITER.
“We have become a model of how countries of different persuasion can operate over decades, just through a shared vision of a better world that everyone wants for generations to come,” Coblentz said.
More than 30 countries are collaborating on the ITER project, each contributing components of the massive machine.
Fusion is one of those technologies that people often joke about that is still a decade away. But seeing what ITER is building firsthand has given me hope that we may truly be living in the last decade when fusion is still talked about as a pipe dream.
To watch our journey into the heart of this unique experiment in fusion energy and international cooperation, watch the video in this article.
