Of Interest archive

Over nearly two decades, Europe's contribution to ITER has helped create the world's largest fusion supply chain. A new report from Fusion for Energy (F4E), Building the European Fusion Supply Chain, traces the development of an industrial ecosystem comprising at least 2,700 companies and 75 research organizations, supported by EUR 7 billion in investment. Beyond delivering first-of-a-kind components for ITER, this investment has strengthened European industrial capabilities, fostered innovation and developed expertise essential to future fusion projects. The report examines the procurement strategies behind this transformation and how Europe can maintain its competitiveness as fusion moves toward commercialization.

Read more and access the report on the F4E website.

The JOREK magneto-hydro-dynamic simulation code now available open source, allowing scientists across the worldwide fusion community to contribute to and validate the code against experiments.

JOREK is extensively used for modelling of plasma disruptions, which are the most intense plasma instabilities in tokamaks, and the associated thermal and electromagnetic loads on components installed inside ITER’s vacuum vessel to protect it from plasma and neutron impact. However, its most important application for ITER is the study and improvement of the efficiency of disruption mitigation. JOREK can accurately simulate the physics of the injection of shattered pellets and the resulting 3-dimensional evolution of the magnetic field, which determines the deposition of energy and particles (including runaway electrons) in the large-scale plasma disturbances that take place during disruptions. 

Access the JOREK code in the ITER IMAS repository. 

For years, the transfer of large components on the ITER site relied on self-propelled modular trailers (SPMT) powered by conventional diesel power pack units (PPU), which pumped high-pressure hydraulic oil to the transporters' motors. Powerful and dependable, diesel engines are also noisy and produce exhaust fumes and fine particles—an important consideration when operating inside buildings.

Now, specially developed electric power pack units from Dutch heavy-lifting specialist Mammoet have replaced their diesel counterparts on the ITER site. Developed for ITER and global logistics provider DAHER, the new Mammoet e.PPUs are a first of their kind. Join TV presenter and engineer Rob Bell and his team as they document the transfer of two large components using the new technology.

Watch Mammoet's 11-minute video on YouTube.

Germany’s Wendelstein 7-X stellarator began a new experimental campaign in September, bringing together scientists from around the world to advance research into high-performance plasmas and long-pulse operation in stellarators.

The OP2.4 campaign, scheduled to run through mid-December, builds on previous achievements in plasma confinement and sustained operation. Among the participants are EUROfusion researchers from approximately 20 European laboratories, whose contributions focus on three priorities: achieving hotter, denser and better-confined plasmas; improving understanding of fast-ion behaviour and turbulence; and extending high-power plasma discharges.

One ambitious objective is to sustain discharges lasting more than 500 seconds, with an energy throughput of 6 gigajoules.

Unlike tokamaks, stellarators use a complex, three-dimensional magnetic field to confine plasma without requiring a strong plasma current. The results of the campaign will help improve physics models and inform the development of future stellarator-based fusion power plants.

Read the full article on the EUROfusion website.

--Photo: MPI for Plasma Physics, Jan Michael Hosan

The ITER Organization will host the 4th ITER Public-Private Fusion Workshop at ITER Headquarters on 12 and 13 April 2027.

ITER Public-Private Fusion Workshops bring together actors from across the public and private fusion communities to strengthen collaboration across the global fusion ecosystem. For the fourth edition in 2027, the workshop will mark a further step in this dialogue, moving beyond information exchange towards practical collaboration on shared technical, engineering and industrial challenges.

Under the theme "United by Fusion: Shared Challenges, Joint Solutions," the workshop will explore the engineering and industrial capabilities needed to build and operate fusion facilities, as well as the partnerships, infrastructure and skilled workforce required to accelerate progress.

As in 2025, the 2027 ITER Public-Private Fusion Workshop will take place just a few days ahead of the 2027 ITER Business Forum, which will be held in Mandelieu on the French Riviera. Taken together, the two events will provide the opportunity for the fusion community to exchange knowledge, build connections, and explore new partnerships—bringing scientific, technological, industrial, and business perspectives together within a single week.

Registration will open in late November on the ITER website. 

The European Domestic Agency for ITER, Fusion for Energy, seeks to reward the commercial use of fusion technologies in non-fusion markets. Its Fusion Technology Transfer Award 2026 is open to European companies and organizations that take, or plan to take, fusion technology or know-how into the broader market. The award is organized in collaboration with EUROfusion and with the support of Viromii Innovation, and comes with a EUR 10,000 reward. 

Applications are open until 30 November 2026. See all information about how to apply here.

Read about past success stories and how fusion brings concrete benefits to European industry here. 

On 14 October, join the latest edition of World Energy Bridges*, an international webinar series organized by the WFEO Committee on Energy and World Energy Council France. In this session, ITER Scientific Director Alain Bécoulet will address whether fusion energy is a reality for today or a promise for tomorrow, exploring: 

• Latest research breakthroughs and technological milestones 
• Key updates on the ITER project and its roadmap 
• The evolving global fusion ecosystem 

Speakers: 

• Alain Bécoulet, Deputy Director-General and Scientific Director, ITER 
• Marie-Line Vaiani, Chair, WFEO Committee on Energy & Member, UN Council of Engineers for the Energy Transition

An interactive Q&A session with participants will follow the presentation. 

Follow this link for more information or to register.
(Image courtesy of KSTAR)

What technologies will Europe need to master to build the fusion power plants of the future? The European Domestic Agency, Fusion for Energy (F4E), has brought together hundreds of European experts to map out the current state of play in critical areas, identifying gaps, and highlighting opportunities for future research and investment.

Since early 2025, through a series of technical workshops, eight technical areas have been examined and the following reports have now been published:

Fusion Fuel Cycle (download)
Magnets (download)
Additive Manufacturing (download)
Metrology and Reverse Engineering (download)
Artificial Intelligence in Fusion (download)
Plasma-Facing Components, Technology and Manufacturing (download)

The workshops are creating new connections across Europe’s fusion community, as they bring together academia, research centres, industry, SMEs, start-ups and other Big Science projects. The resulting reports are a shared reference for the fusion ecosystem, charting where Europe is strongest, where there are vulnerabilities (such as supply bottlenecks or external dependence), and where investments can have the greatest impact.

The workshops are linked to F4E’s Technology Development Programme (TDP).

See the full announcement on the Fusion for Energy website.

The 34th Symposium on Fusion Technology (SOFT 2026) opened today in Aix-en-Provence, France, just one hour from the ITER site.

Organized by the Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research (IRFM), home to the WEST tokamak and part of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), the five-day conference brings together scientists, engineers, industry representatives, and exhibitors to share the latest results and breakthroughs across all areas of fusion technology.

ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi delivered one of two opening plenaries, sharing an update on ITER’s progress. The ITER Newsline will have a full report next week.

The Third High-level Meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) World Fusion Energy Group will be convened on 12 November 2026 at IAEA Headquarters in Vienna, Austria.

Recent scientific and technological advances in fusion research have heightened interest among policymakers, scientists, investors, and the public, making the faster pursuit of fusion energy a crucial area of focus. The IAEA World Fusion Energy Group (WFEG) is the concrete manifestation of this ambition. 

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi announced the meeting to the 70th Regular Session of the IAEA General Conference. "Fusion energy has been a part of the IAEA’s portfolio since the very beginning, with scientists using our conferences and publications to demonstrate their most important breakthroughs. This continues to be the case. But fusion has made strides; is gathering momentum and a new group of stakeholders will be crucial to its next phase. They will be gathering at our third high-level meeting of the World Fusion Energy Group (WFEG), here in Vienna in November, helping to accelerate research, development, demonstration, and deployment of a source that takes its inspiration from our most important star."

The inaugural World Fusion Energy Group meeting took place in 2024 in Rome; a second opened jointly with the 30th IAEA Fusion Energy Conference in Chengdu, China, in 2025.

See all information here.

Under a new agreement signed in June 2026, ITER and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Plasma Physics (ASIPP) have launched a joint postdoctoral training program that will give early-career researchers the opportunity to conduct fusion research at both institutions under the supervision of experts from China and ITER. 

ASIPP will be creating a series of postdoctoral positions focused on research topics of mutual interest to the ITER Organization and ASIPP. The selected researchers will be employed by ASIPP and jointly supervised by experts from both organizations. The positions are offered for a two-year term, with research carried out both at ITER and at ASIPP headquarters. 

These postdoctoral positions are now open to application by Chinese nationals and nationals of other ITER Members. Further information, including application details, is available in Chinese and English here.

French YouTuber Amixem recently visited ITER for a video exploring three of France’s most “off-limit” locations, alongside secret areas of the Eiffel Tower and the French presidential plane. Filmed earlier this year, the visit included a tour of the Assembly Hall with project engineer Raphael Tieulent and the tokamak pit with assembly facility coordinator Isabelle Gentili.

The video attracted more than two million views within its first 24 hours online and has since surpassed four million views.

Drawing a parallel between the Eiffel Tower and ITER, Amixem remarked: “[The tower] was a kind of technological demonstration, a way of saying to the world: look at what we can do in our time. And I think ITER is exactly the same.”

Amixem, whose real name is Maxime Chabroud, launched his YouTube channel in 2012 and today has around 9.5 million subscribers. According to vidIQ, his videos have generated more than 4.5 billion views. While he first gained popularity through gaming content, his channel has since expanded to include humour, challenges, travel, experiments, and large-scale documentary-style productions.

The full video is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1bW68QJMUI. The video is in French and includes English subtitles as well as an automatically dubbed English audio track.

The 16th ITER International School on the topic of "Tokamaks as Fusion Reactors" will take place from 30 November 2026 to 4 December 2026. The school is jointly organized by Institute for Plasma Research (IPR), Bhat, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, and The International Center for Theoretical Sciences – Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (ICTS-TIFR), Bengaluru, in collaboration with ITER Organization and Aix Marseille University, France. The school will be hosted at ICTS-TIFR, Bengaluru. 

The ITER International School aims to prepare young scientists and engineers for working in the field of nuclear fusion and in research applications associated with the ITER project. The 16th edition will cover a broad range of topics related to tokamak fusion reactors’ physics and technologies, such as plasma confinement, heat and particle exhaust, integrated control and operation, integrated modelling and digital twins, plasma-materials interaction, superconducting magnets technology, neutron shielding, and tritium breeding. 

Registration has been extended through 3 September. For all information see this website. 

The Joint European Torus (JET) operated for 40 years before entering decommissioning in 2023. It was the last tokamak capable of operating with deuterium-tritium (D-T) fuel until devices like ITER begin their own D-T research, which makes the datasets generated in JET’s final campaigns effectively irreplaceable. 

The outcome of its final experiments between 2022 and 2023 was presented as an Overview contribution to the last IAEA Fusion Energy Conference in Chengdu and was recently published in Nuclear Fusion. These results are already validating predictive models, contributing to shared international databases, and informing the design of first-of-a-kind fusion power plants. 

The results speak for themselves. JET set a new fusion energy record of 69 MJ in tritium-rich hybrid plasmas and achieved long-pulse H-mode operation up to 60 seconds. The team also demonstrated ITER-relevant integrated scenarios and generated critical data informing the pellet injection mechanisms for ITER’s disruption mitigation system. JET’s comprehensive fuel-retention studies will also act as a precedent for how ITER may track and manage its tritium inventory.

Beyond the physics, JET’s final years leave behind decades of operational experience in handling tritium and nuclear-grade components will directly shape how ITER and future power plants are safely operated.

JET’s results are further described in an article published by EUROfusion and in the newly published scientific paper.

The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) has announced the completion of the fifth experimental campaign on MAST Upgrade, the world’s largest operating spherical tokamak. Notable campaign results included achieving its highest-pressure plasma to date and overcoming plasma instability issues through innovative plasma control and heat-exhaust methods. These results will inform the design and operation of both ITER and STEP, the UK’s prototype fusion power plant project.

The experiments suppressed ELMs—bursts of energy released at the plasma edge that can cause a loss of pressure and deposit extreme thermal loads on plasma-facing components—to record the highest pressure ever stably achieved in the machine.

The MAST Upgrade team also developed a novel plasma control technique wherein they determined the plasma’s position by measuring visible light produced by deuterium leaving the upper and lower outer divertors. This is important progress for the automated, real-time control systems that future power plants will need for operations.

“The results genuinely shape the design of future fusion power plants,” said James Harrison, Head of MAST Upgrade Science at UKAEA. “Accessing four stable high-performance plasma regimes, including QH-mode, QCE and I-mode and our world-first plasma position control technique, demonstrates that MAST Upgrade is producing science at the leading edge of what is possible.”

Experiments will now pause as MAST Upgrade undergoes further enhancements, including the installation of two new neutral beam injectors and an electron Bernstein wave (EBW) system like the one planned for STEP. A sixth series of experiments focused on STEP-relevant research is planned for 2028.

For more information about MAST Upgrade’s fifth campaign, see the article and video published by the UKAEA.

Matthew Hole—plasma physics expert at the Australian National University and ITER Scientist Fellow—recently developed a mathematical model to solve a problem confronting ITER engineers.

ITER will have roughly 500 magnetic sensors embedded in and around the plasma-facing first wall. During manufacturing, installation, connecting, and commissioning, there is a risk that sensor channels may be swapped, a cable may be mislabelled, or the polarity of a sensor may be reversed. Although the locations of the magnetic sensors are known, ITER teams must still verify that each recorded data channel corresponds to the correct sensor and polarity after installation and connection of hundreds of cables.

This labelling of 500 sensors was an extremely labour-intensive task. “I wanted to find a way to do it faster,” says Hole.

During his three-month fellowship at ITER, Hole combined mathematics, physics, and computing to model the magnetic-field response of every coil and frame the puzzle as a mathematical search problem. AI-assisted coding tools identified the class of problem and suggested an unexpected technique called the Hungarian optimisation algorithm. 

This enabled Hole to program a model delivering the coil positions and orientations in a tiny fraction of the previously allocated time. His model is also replicable, meaning ITER engineers can rerun it if a coil ever becomes misaligned.

“AI can’t replace the scientist’s curiosity or intuition,” says Matthew, “but it can explore scientific threads much more quickly. It’s like having tireless expert companions, across all fields, always available that can help you advance more rapidly.”

The work is described in an article published by the Australian National University and in a newly published scientific paper.

WEST has concluded its three-month C13 campaign with a milestone: producing its first H-mode plasmas with Edge Localized Modes (ELMs). 

H-mode is the high-confinement regime that ITER will use to achieve several of its research goals, and it is characterized by ELMs—bursts of energy and particles released at the plasma edge that deposit extreme thermal loads on plasma-facing components.

Achieving this regime on WEST provides a unique opportunity to investigate plasma-wall interactions closer to foreseen ITER conditions and opens the route to one of the pillars of the WEST scientific program: testing the ITER divertor components against transient heat fluxes during long time periods and in a similar tungsten environment. 

Beyond plasma performance, the C13 campaign yielded operational insights like the minimum wall boronization needed to restart after a venting, the use of ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH) for wall conditioning between pulses, and the use of ICRH for boronization. 

These results will contribute to the preparation of ITER-relevant plasma scenarios, the development of predictive models, and the validation of the ITER divertor’s performance.

Read more about WEST’s C13 campaign here.

The ITER Organization and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Plasma Physics (ASIPP) are launching a joint postdoctoral training program. 

ASIPP will employ early-career researchers, who will be jointly supervised by experts from both institutions. The two-year positions will focus on topics of shared interests and involve conducting research at both ITER and ASIPP headquarters.

Applications are now open to candidates from China and other ITER Member countries. Read ITER’s announcement or visit the ASIPP webpage for further details about the program and its application process.

The 16th ITER International School on the topic of "Tokamaks as Fusion Reactors" will be held from 30 November 2026 to 4 December 2026. The school is jointly organized by Institute for Plasma Research (IPR), Bhat, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, and The International Center for Theoretical Sciences – Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (ICTS-TIFR), Bengaluru, in collaboration with ITER Organization and Aix Marseille University, France. The school will be hosted at ICTS-TIFR, Bengaluru. 

The ITER International School aims to prepare young scientists and engineers for working in the field of nuclear fusion and in research applications associated with the ITER project. The 16th edition will cover a broad range of topics related to tokamak fusion reactors’ physics and technologies, such as plasma confinement, heat and particle exhaust, integrated control and operation, integrated modelling and digital twins, plasma-materials interaction, superconducting magnets technology, neutron shielding, and tritium breeding. 

Registration is open from 25 July to 23 August. For all information see this website. 

Fusion for Energy (F4E) has released the first Global Fusion Energy Trends report, which examines the fusion ecosystems of five key players: the European Union, China, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. 

The study reports a total of EUR 20.35 billion dedicated to fusion by the actors between 2022 and 2025, with public finance representing 78% of investments. Of the five, the US and China led spending but used different models—with the US leading in private investment and China heavily investing in state-controlled commercial entities.

The report cited 83 operating, under-construction, and planned fusion devices in the actors’ combined pipeline, 42 of which are active. Although no operating facility has yet reached plant-relevant plasma conditions, it names ITER, SPARC, BEST, and JT-60SA as opportunities to close the gap.

Also compared were the parties’ scientific outputs and research impacts. The paper indicates that the US and EU have the highest volume of fusion-relevant scientific publications and accumulated citations in the 1950-2026 period. However, China’s scientific output has accelerated in the past 20 years, and the country also holds over half of the 2,210 total fusion patents filed by the five parties.

Download the full report here.