Subscribe options

Select your newsletters:

Please enter your email address:

@

Your email address will only be used for the purpose of sending you the ITER Organization publication(s) that you have requested. ITER Organization will not transfer your email address or other personal data to any other party or use it for commercial purposes.

If you change your mind, you can easily unsubscribe by clicking the unsubscribe option at the bottom of an email you've received from ITER Organization.

For more information, see our Privacy policy.

News & Media

Latest ITER Newsline

  • Test facility | How do electronics react to magnetic fields?

    A tokamak is basically a magnetic cage designed to confine, shape and control the super-hot plasmas that make fusion reactions possible. Inside the ITER Tokamak [...]

    Read more

  • ITER Robots | No two alike

    More than 500 students took part in the latest ITER Robots challenge. Working from the same instructions and technical specifications, they had worked in teams [...]

    Read more

  • Data archiving | Operating in quasi real time

    To accommodate the first real-time system integrated with the ITER control system, new components of the data archiving system have been deployed. Data archivi [...]

    Read more

  • Repairs | Setting the stage for a critical task

    Like in a game of musical chairs—albeit in slow motion and at a massive scale—components in the Assembly Hall are being transferred from one location to another [...]

    Read more

  • Image of the week | There is life on Planet ITER

    Dated April 2023, this new image of the ITER "planet" places the construction site squarely in the middle. One kilometre long, 400 metres wide, the IT [...]

    Read more

Of Interest

See archived entries

ITER NEWSLINE -

JT-60SA

"ITER satellite" to begin operating next year

In a major assembly milestone for the JT-60SA tokamak, the 12-metre-tall central solenoid was successfully installed by overhead crane on 8 May. Japanese television was there to film the operation.

The 100-tonne, 4-module central solenoid was installed on the JT-60SA tokamak in early May. This is the last of the major magnets to be integrated into the machine. (Click to view larger version...)
The 100-tonne, 4-module central solenoid was installed on the JT-60SA tokamak in early May. This is the last of the major magnets to be integrated into the machine.
JT-60SA will begin operating in 2020 as a fully superconducting tokamak capable of confining high-temperature deuterium plasmas. The experiment—a major modification of the former JT-60U tokamak at the Naka Fusion Institute in Japan—is designed to address key physics for ITER and next-stage devices.

Tokamak assembly has been underway since 2013 and will be completed in March of next year, with the first plasma planned in September 2020.

The single heaviest component—the central solenoid—was lowered into the centre of the donut-shaped machine on 8 May (see videos below).

How JT-60SA compares to ITER

Major radius (metres) ~3.0 (~6.2)

Plasma current (MA) <5.5 (<15)

Plasma volume (m3) ~140 (~840)

Inductive pulse length (s) 100 (>400)

Experts highlight the complementarity of the JT-60SA and ITER machines, which record overlaps in areas including magnet conductor design and testing, cryoplant design, in-vessel remote handling, and heating and current drive systems. By coming on line before ITER, JT-60SA will allow the exploration of ITER-relevant high density plasma regimes and the optimization of configurations for ITER and the next-phase device DEMO. (See more about the scientific objectives of JT-60SA here.)

JT-60SA is financed jointly by Europe and Japan through the Broader Approach Agreement*, through implementing agencies Fusion for Energy (F4E) and the National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology (QST) of Japan.

*The Broader Approach agreement was concluded between the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) and Japan in 2007 for advanced R&D activities which aim to complement the ITER project and to accelerate the realization of fusion energy. Learn more here.

See a related article of the European Domestic Agency website here.

See the video clips on TV channels Asahi and Ibaraki (in Japanese).

return to the latest published articles