UK industry has won well over £100 million (115.5 M€) worth of contracts so far from construction of the ITER fusion project in France, but needs to do better if it is to benefit from the next construction phase, worth up to EUR 2 billion (2.3 B€). That is one of the conclusions of a UK Trade & Investment (UKTI)-sponsored event on "Business Opportunities for UK plc for Fusion and ITER" held at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE), Oxfordshire, on 23 September.
ITER will be the world's largest fusion energy experiment when it is completed in 2019. UK companies have fared well during the site preparation phase at Cadarache in the south of France. The next phase will see a large portion of the project's EUR 10 billion (11.5 B€) tokamak and buildings construction budget being spent.
Over 100 companies attended the one-day conference at which representatives from ITER, Europe's procurement agency for ITER Fusion for Energy (F4E), UKTI, CCFE engineers and UK companies working on ITER Project, reviewed the business opportunities and engineering challenges in the next phase of ITER construction, and described the procurement procedure and tendering process.