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News & Media

Latest ITER Newsline

  • Deputy Director-General | Yutaka Kamada, Science & Technology

    In his late childhood and early teens, Yutaka Kamada developed two passions: one for growing cactus, the other for fusion energy. Half a century later, his [...]

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  • Images of the week | Yet another magnet feeder from China

    This in-cryostat feeder will supply electrical power and cryogenic fluids to some of the top correction coils of the ITER machine. ITER will rely on 31 mag [...]

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  • Gyrotrons | India successfully demonstrates ITER power and pulse requirements

    As a part of its in-kind commitments to the project, ITER India will deliver two radio-frequency-based power sources (or 'gyrotrons") with state-of-the-art [...]

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  • Neutral beam power supply | Lightning-power voltage

    In January 2021, preparatory works began for the construction of two large buildings designed to accommodate a unique set of electrical equipment. A little more [...]

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  • MITICA | Cryopump passes site acceptance tests

    Cryopumps, which play an essential role in ITER, are not what one has in mind when picturing a pump. A conventional pump creates negative pressure to suck in fl [...]

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Of Interest

See archived entries

ITER NEWSLINE -

Image of the week

200 million years ago at ITER

Back in the Mesozoic, some 66 to 250 million years ago, the ITER site lay at the bottom of a shallow sea that covered most of what is now Provence.

A foreman with a sharp eye: Christopher Lebreton spotted the circular shape imprinted on a rock excavated from the platform. (Click to view larger version...)
A foreman with a sharp eye: Christopher Lebreton spotted the circular shape imprinted on a rock excavated from the platform.
The warm waters swarmed with life: marine reptiles such as ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, sea urchins, belemnites and the ubiquitous ammonite, resembling present-day nautiluses.

A few weeks ago, as workers excavated a gallery for the Tokamak's cooling water system, a dweller of this ancient world resurfaced.

It wasn't noticed immediately, however. "We only saw the circular shape imprinted on the rock slab once it had been delivered to the deposit area behind the construction platform," explains Christopher Lebreton, a foreman with the contractor that is performing the excavation works—SVA (Spie-Batignolles, Valérian, ADF).

The shape imprinted on the rock was that of the coiled shell of an average-size ammonite—a species which could vary in size from 20 millimetres to 2.55 metres in diameter.

According to Caroline Gamache, a geologist with Spie-Batignolles, the limestone strata where the fossil was found can be dated back 120-200 million years—a time when dinosaurs ruled the Earth and our closest parent was a tiny mouse striving to survive in the realm of the "monstrous lizards."

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