![]() Current nuclear power stations rely on nuclear fission with the nucleus of an atom being split to release energy. Nuclear fusion uses a different approach from traditional nuclear energy. One gram of deuterium-tritium fuel mixture in the process of nuclear fusion produces 90,000-kilowatt hours of energy, or the equivalent of 11 tonnes of coal. Harnessing fusion power in terrestrial conditions would provide sufficient energy to satisfy mounting demand, and to do so in a sustainable manner that has a relatively small impact on the environment. Background ITER will produce energy by fusing deuterium and tritium into helium.įusion aims to replicate the process that takes place in stars where the intense heat at the core fuses together nuclei and produces massive amounts of energy in the form of heat and light. ITER's planned successor, the EUROfusion-led DEMO, is expected to be one of the first fusion reactors to produce electricity in an experimental environment. Regardless of the final cost, ITER has already been described as the most expensive science experiment of all time, the most complicated engineering project in human history, and one of the most ambitious human collaborations since the development of the International Space Station (€100 billion or $150 billion budget) and the Large Hadron Collider (€7.5 billion budget). The initial budget was close to €6 billion, but the total price of construction and operations is projected to be from €18 to €22 billion other estimates place the total cost between $45 billion and $65 billion, though these figures are disputed by ITER. Ĭonstruction of the ITER complex in France started in 2013, and assembly of the tokamak began in 2020. The United Kingdom participates through EU's Fusion for Energy (F4E), Switzerland participates through Euratom and F4E, and the project has cooperation agreements with Australia, Canada, Kazakhstan and Thailand. ITER is funded and run by seven member parties: China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. ![]() As a research reactor, the heat energy generated will not be converted to electricity, but simply vented. Beyond just heating the plasma, the total electricity consumed by the reactor and facilities will range from 110 MW up to 620 MW peak for 30-second periods during plasma operation. As of 2022, the record for energy production using nuclear fusion is held by the National Ignition Facility reactor, which achieved a Q of 1.5 in December 2022. This would mean a ten-fold gain of plasma heating power ( Q), as measured by heating input to thermal output, or Q ≥ 10. ITER's thermonuclear fusion reactor will use over 300 MW of electrical power to cause the plasma to absorb 50 MW of thermal power, creating 500 MW of heat from fusion for periods of 400 to 600 seconds. ITER's goals are to achieve enough fusion to produce 10 times as much thermal output power as thermal power absorbed by the plasma for short time periods to demonstrate and test technologies that would be needed to operate a fusion power plant including cryogenics, heating, control and diagnostics systems, and remote maintenance to achieve and learn from a burning plasma to test tritium breeding and to demonstrate the safety of a fusion plant. ITER's stated purpose is scientific research, and technological demonstration of a large fusion reactor, without electricity generation. The long-term goal of fusion research is to generate electricity. ITER will be the largest of more than 100 fusion reactors built since the 1950s, with ten times the plasma volume of any other tokamak operating today. It is being built next to the Cadarache facility in southern France. ![]() Upon completion of construction of the main reactor and first plasma, planned for late 2025, it will be the world's largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment and the largest experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor. ![]() ITER (initially the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, iter meaning "the way" or "the path" in Latin ) is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject aimed at creating energy through a fusion process similar to that of the Sun. ![]()
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