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

New brochure highlights fusion spinoffs

A physics student studying plasma behaviour at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. (Photo: Peter Ginter) (Click to view larger version...)
A physics student studying plasma behaviour at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. (Photo: Peter Ginter)
While challenges remain in harnessing fusion as an energy source, significant advances have been made in the last decades. Beyond moving fusion closer to the point of industrialization, there have been lesser-known spinoff benefits to the development of fusion technology, including applications in engineering, diagnostics, superconducting technologies, and medicine.

For example, early work in magnetic fusion energy led General Atomics, a San Diego-based innovation firm, to improve power systems for the US government and commercial customers. Technological advances include the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), an electromagnetic catapult that will replace steam catapults used currently on aircraft carriers.

 (Click to view larger version...)
The Milliwave Thermal Analyzer is another fusion spinoff used to monitor the properties of materials in extreme conditions, for example inside a glass melter. This new technology, adopted from diagnostics developed for fusion environments, can withstand previously inaccessible conditions.

Other examples of how technology developed for fusion has found its way into other disciplines are: a new generation of compact cyclotrons which can successfully be used in cancer therapy; and a new method of improved polymer-electrode bonding using plasma which is hoped to lead to creating superior artificial muscles to benefit people with disabilities.

These and more examples are listed in a new brochure produced by the US Fusion Communications Group Fusion Spinoffs: Making a Difference Today that can be downloaded here
 


return to the latest published articles