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

  • Image of the week | More cladding and a new message

    As the October sun sets on the ITER worksite, the cladding of the neutral beam power buildings takes on a golden hue. One after the other, each of the scientifi [...]

    Read more

  • Cryodistribution | Cold boxes 20 years in the making

    Twenty years—that is how long it took to design, manufacture and deliver the cold valve boxes that regulate the flow of cryogens to the tokamak's vacuum system. [...]

    Read more

  • Open Doors Day | Face to face with ITER immensity

    In October 2011, when ITER organized its first 'Open Doors Day,' there was little to show and much to leave to the public's imagination: the Poloidal Field [...]

    Read more

  • Fusion | Turning neutrons into electricity

    How will the power generated by nuclear fusion reactions be converted into electricity? That is not a question that ITER has been designed to answer explicitly, [...]

    Read more

  • Fusion world | JET completes a storied 40-year run

    In its final deuterium-tritium experimental campaign, Europe's JET tokamak device demonstrated plasma scenarios that are expected on ITER and future fusion powe [...]

    Read more

Of Interest

See archived entries

ITER NEWSLINE -

10 years ago in Newsline

White, silent and immobile

Ten years ago, in mid-January 2010, heavy snow fell on Provence and the white blanket that settled on the ITER platform accentuated its main feature: utter emptiness.

Ten years, almost to the day, have passed since this panoramic picture of the ITER platform was taken. In ten years, the place changed from barren steppe to massive industrial infrastructure and bustling small town. (Click to view larger version...)
Ten years, almost to the day, have passed since this panoramic picture of the ITER platform was taken. In ten years, the place changed from barren steppe to massive industrial infrastructure and bustling small town.
Following three years of clearing and levelling under the responsibility of Agence Iter France, the platform was ready but had not yet been invested by construction workers. On the clear day this panoramic picture was taken, everything seemed to be silent and immobile.

A brown trace to the left of the image marks the shallow depression that would later become home to the Tokamak Complex.

On the opposite side of the panorama, behind a hedge of firs at the foot of the platform, a lone office building is visible: a little more than a year earlier, approximately 400 ITER staff members had moved from portacabins inside the CEA enclosure into this prefabricated construction which served as temporary headquarters until November 2012.

Although there is nothing much to see on the ITER platform, a viewpoint with a site map is already available for visitors. One of the visitors that ITER welcomed that same week this picture was taken was none other than His Serene Highness Prince Albert II of Monaco, the ruler of the 180-hectare Mediterranean principality (comparable in surface to the ITER site).

return to the latest published articles