Of Interest archive

Recruitment opened on Monday 12 January 2026 for eight Postdoctoral Fellowships at the ITER Organization.

If you are an outstanding PhD graduate in science, technology, and engineering whose expertise aligns with the needs of the ITER project, you may be eligible for a two-year postdoctoral position at the ITER Organization, where you will work closely with ITER specialists and contribute to the project through original research.

The eight Postdoctoral Fellowships are proposed through two different funding schemes: 

Monaco/ITER Postdoctoral Fellowships (5 positions)
The Principality of Monaco is providing the financing for five Postdoctoral Fellowships through a Partnership Arrangement signed with the ITER Organization in 2008 and renewed in 2018. You can apply to a Monaco/ITER Postdoctoral Fellowship if: 1) you are a national of China, the European Union plus Switzerland, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, the United States, or the Principality of Monaco; and 2) your PhD was awarded after 1 January 2023 (or you will have received your PhD before 31 December 2026).

Korea-ITER Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (3 positions)
Through an agreement signed between the ITER Organization and the Korean Domestic Agency, ITER Korea directly funds scientific or technical fellowships in fields of mutual interest and with a view to contributing to training the talent that will be needed for the fusion industry of the future. To apply for a Korea-ITER Postdoctoral Research Fellowship you must be a Korean postdoctoral researcher.

The application process for both Fellowship categories is the same: after verifying that you have relevant experience in one or more of the 2026 research topics, apply by 1 March 2026 through the ITER Jobs portal.

See this ITER webpage for more information. 

The fifth campaign of spherical tokamak fusion experiments is underway at the MAST Upgrade facility at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in England. This latest campaign will focus on advancing understanding of high-pressure fusion plasma, optimising plasma control and energy confinement, refining advanced divertor designs for heat exhaust management, and validating predictive tools used to model plasma behaviour in future fusion power plants.

The Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST) Upgrade, which became operational in 2020, is the world’s largest active spherical tokamak. Its test campaigns will inform the construction of the STEP demo-class fusion plant prototype that is scheduled to begin operations in 2040.

The latest research phase will last six months and involve 950 plasma pulses. More than 200 international researchers will be involved in the experiments and the results will contribute to the growing global body of experimental fusion data.

The 360° virtual tour of the ITER construction site has been updated with a new set of photos—drone footage from December 2025 that shows three vacuum vessel sector modules in the tokamak pit. Click on and rotate the new photos in the Tokamak Pit gallery to see one-third of the ITER plasma chamber from every angle.

Accessible from the NEWS & MEDIA pages of the ITER website or by clicking on the link below, the 2D tour requires no special equipment to enjoy. If you do have 3D glasses, click on the yellow goggle symbol at the top of any screen.

Click here to see the latest 360° ITER virtual tour.

The EU Fusion Safety and Regulation Course 2026, organized by the Clean Air Task Force in partnership with the Xcitech School on Science and Technology, offers professionals an opportunity to learn from leading experts—including specialists from the ITER Organization—about safety and regulatory considerations for fusion facilities. The three-day course will also cover important safety topics that apply to lab-scale fusion research today such as tritium handling and management of cryogenic systems.

Topics include case studies in safety and licensing in multiple facilities across Europe, the latest developments in the regulatory landscape in Europe and the United States, tritium safety and management, activated material safety and activated waste management, and safety practices at lab-scale fusion facilities and major accelerator facilities.

The course will take place at the headquarters of Fusion for Energy in Barcelona, Spain, 17 to 19 February 2026. Learn more here.

The prize-winning Turkmenistan team from the International Physics Olympiad (IPhO) arrived at ITER on 18 December for a special presentation of the project and tour of the site.

The visit was part of the ITER-sponsored prize given for diversity at the IPhO, with Turkmenistan being the best-ranked team that had at least two women and two men. 

The IPhO is open to students under the age of 20 who have not yet entered university. The Turkmenistan team featured Nurgeldi Annagurdov (17), Dovlet Annamyradov (17), and the sisters Aysenem Kakamyradova (17) and Mahriban Kakamyradova (18). Along with being part of the team that won the ITER prize, Aysenem Kakamyradova also won the Claudine Hermann Prize for best female performance.

The delegation from Turkmenistan included the students’ high school teacher, Kerim Cherkezov, and their physics advisor, Allamyrat Amanmadov of Turkmen State University.

While on site, the team received special diplomas of recognition from ITER Deputy Director General Luo Delong and a private presentation of the ITER project given by ITER’s Deputy Director General-Chief Scientist Alain Bécoulet and Alexander Alekseev, the Deputy Head of Science & Integration. Alain Bécoulet said these sorts of initiatives to recognize emerging talent were essential for ITER. “They are 17 and 18 years old. They are the future of fusion.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has launched a new platform that will serve as a central hub for information on the fusion sector.

IAEA’s FUSE Fusion CONNECT platform was officially launched on 4 December 2025. It aims to make it easier for IAEA’s 180 member states to follow developments in the fusion sector and access tools such as the Fusion Portal and the Nuclear Fusion journal. The platform is also in the process of compiling a public directory of fusion organizations and machines.

The IAEA noted that the momentum in fusion energy—from record-breaking achievements in the public sector to the thriving private sector—meant that collaborative tools such as FUSE are more important than ever.

Discover the FUSE page here.

In a continuation of the merriest of traditions, ITER has released its annual holiday greeting card. This year, the card was designed by Natacha Roux and Philippe Cathala of IN-MEDIAPROD, who sought to give the video card an original twist by using AI tools to virtually decorate the Assembly Building and other ITER locations.

“We wanted to do something extraordinary this year and since artificial intelligence is everywhere now, we thought we could apply it to the card,” says Natacha.

You can enjoy their creation here.

Over the years, the ITER holiday card has evolved from a simple e-card to more elaborate video productions such as the 2019 card or the 2023 card.

FuseNet has opened nominations for its Master Thesis Prize 2025. The prize is open to students who completed fusion-related theses in 2025 and recognizes outstanding academic work carried out at European institutions or in collaboration with international partners.

Eligible candidates can submit their candidatures until 9 February 2026. FuseNet advises students to coordinate with their home institution before submitting, as each FuseNet member institution may put forward only one nomination.

The 2024 prize recognized three researchers for their theses on divertor modelling, turbulence phenomena in plasmas with varying triangularity, and dimensionality reduction methods applied to magnetohydrodynamic equilibria.

FuseNet supports education, training, and collaboration for students and young researchers in the field of fusion energy across Europe.

More information available here.

As part of French President Emmanuel Macron’s state visit to China from 3 to 5 December, the two countries issued a joint declaration on "further cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy." It included a point asserting nuclear fusion is an “essential option” for abundant, decarbonized energy and reaffirmed their commitment to ITER.

France and China have a long history of working together to ensure the peaceful use of nuclear energy, dating back to a first protocol signed in 1982. Cooperation on nuclear fusion was cited in the 10th Protocol for Cooperation in Peaceful Use of Nuclear Energy, which was signed in 2009 by former ITER Director-General Bernard Bigot when he was still Chairman of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). The most recent joint declaration emphasizes the value of nuclear energy for addressing climate change and ensuring energy security while citing the important role nuclear fusion will play in the future. The declaration states:

“Both sides recognize that nuclear fusion energy represents an important direction for the peaceful use of nuclear energy by humanity and an essential option for an abundant and decarbonized energy source for the future. They are ready to continue their extensive participations in the major international scientific project of the Thermonuclear Fusion Experimental Reactor (ITER) in order to contribute to the successful promotion of the ITER project and its timely completion.”

Read the full Joint Declaration on Further Cooperation in the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy between France and the People’s Republic of China here.

Photograph from the Élysée website.

A new report from the F4E Fusion Observatory analyzes the latest data to provide a global picture of the growing private fusion sector.

The second edition of Global Investment in the Private Fusion Sector shows that, following major investments announced this summer, the cumulative funding for private sector initiatives is now at EUR 13 billion, with 77 companies in the field. "This funding is a mix of sources: private capital accounts for the majority at over EUR 8.9 billion while public funds, totalling around EUR 4.1 billion, are increasingly flowing into private ventures through grants and institutional support. A further EUR 84 million comes from hybrid forms like public-private partnerships and state-backed investments." The report goes on to break down investments by region, by technology, and by type of funding model.

Fusion for Energy (F4E) is the European Union’s organization for the development of fusion energy. It is mainly responsible for Europe’s contribution to ITER, but is also involved in major fusion projects such as the European/Japanese tokamak JT-60SA and the materials research facility IFMIF-DONES. The F4E Fusion Observatory provides objective analysis and intelligence on global and European fusion policies, R&D, technologies, investments and industrial activity for the benefit of European policy makers, the scientific community and other interested parties.

Download the F4E Fusion Observatory report here.

One of the challenges facing fusion is to identify the right materials for the next-generation fusion reactors like DEMO. A major initiative to find these solutions, the IFMIF-DONES project, achieved a major benchmark with the signing on 21 November of an international agreement to strengthen collaboration on testing to identify materials that best resist neutron irradiation.

The International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility-Demo Oriented NEutron Source (IFMIF-DONES) is based in Granada, Spain. The agreement was signed between the IFMIF-DONES España Consortium, Fusion for Energy (F4E) representing the European Commission and Member States, and R&D centres in Croatia (RBI), Japan (QST) and Italy (INFN). The multinational agreement provides a framework for the financing and operation of the test facility.

Learn more at F4E or the IFMIF-DONES site.

The ITER Organization has begun recruitment for its 2026 internship program.

We invite students from across the ITER Members (the People's Republic of China, the European Union, India, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, the United States) to apply for one of our exciting internship opportunities. All Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD students enrolled in a fully accredited degree program are eligible to apply. Internships are offered for up to six months and are extendable to up to one year under certain circumstances. 

The first wave of the campaign runs from 15 November 2025 through 6 January 2026, with the publication of 28 offers on the ITER website. A second-wave campaign will be advertised from 17 January 2026 through 28 February 2026.

See this page to apply. The deadline for first-wave opportunities is 6 January 2026.

The WEST tokamak in France, with its tungsten divertor, is exploring the plasma physics of operation in a tungsten environment.

Research on WEST is directly relevant to ITER, helping to answer questions such as "How will the actively cooled tungsten components of the ITER divertor behave after hours of plasma discharge?" or "Can performant plasmas be produced if plasma-facing components are damaged?" or "How can the monitoring system be optimized for these components?" 

In a six-week campaign that started on 7 November, the team is testing the performance of a tungsten coating on tiles in collaboration with ITER, running experiments to test the "I-mode" regime (an ELM-free improved confinement regime with low impurity content) in collaboration with American and Chinese collaborators, and studying the growth of deposits on the divertor under high particle fluence.

The WEST tokamak (for W Environment in Steady-state Tokamak) is located at the Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research (IRFM) near ITER, part of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission's (CEA's) Cadarache Centre.

See the article published on the CEA IRFM website.

At the ITER Neutral Beam Test Facility in Italy, progress was made in October on the MITICA testbed, where a full-size prototype of the ITER heating neutral beam injector will be tested before ITER operation.

During tests of MITICA's cryogenic infrastructure, the cryopump system successfully reached its nominal operating temperatures: 4.6 K for the cryopumps and 80 K for the thermal radiation shields. Controlled gas injection inside MITICA’s vacuum vessel came next, providing essential data on the cryopumps' behaviour and their capability to capture and retain gas under realistic operating conditions. The charcoal layer within the cryopump reached full saturation, allowing researchers to study gas release dynamics and system limitations. The campaign concluded with the successful warm-up of the MITICA cryogenic system back to room temperature.

Read a full report on the Consorzio RFX website in English or Italian.

Save the date! The 15th ITER International School (IIS) will be held from 20 to 24 July 2026 in Chengdu, China, co-hosted by the Engineering & Technical College of Chengdu University of Technology and the Southwestern Institute of Physics (SWIP).

The subject of the 2026 school is "Physics and engineering of heating and current drive systems for magnetic fusion plasmas," with a scientific program coordinated by Drs. M. Huang and L. Zhang (SWIP) and Drs. M. Schneider and C. Darbos (ITER Organization). Heating and current drive systems are essential for achieving ITER’s fusion power demonstration goals—they not only heat the plasma up to the high temperatures required for thermonuclear deuterium-tritium fusion, but also drive electric currents in the plasma and control its behaviour. To achieve these objectives, a range of heating and current drive systems based on the injection of radiofrequency waves and fast neutrals into the plasma are applied in magnetic fusion devices. Heating and current drive systems involve a wide range of engineering designs, with technical issues to be resolved, and physics processes that need to be described in an integrated way together with the reaction of the plasma to such waves/fast neutrals. 

The 2026 ITER International School will focus on the engineering of heating and current drive systems as well as the physics processes underlying their use for plasma heating, current drive, and the control of plasma scenarios in ITER and, more broadly, in magnetic fusion devices.

Further information on the 2026 school will be available in the next few weeks together with an announcement on the start of pre-registration. Find out more about past schools here.

Glasgow. Sharm El-Sheikh. Dubai. Baku. For the past five years, fusion energy has emerged as a discussion topic at the annual United Nations climate change conferences—the Conferences of the Parties, or COPs. This year in Belém, Brazil, COP30 is taking shape as a pivotal moment in the global effort to reduce energy consumption and turn to clean energy sources. 

On 12 November, at the pavilion of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), ITER and the IAEA co-hosted a panel on “Fusion Energy as a Clean Energy Solution.” The panel explored the current state of fusion from different angles: ITER’s ongoing leadership, the surge in private sector investment and fusion initiatives, the role of the IAEA and NGOs such as the Clean Air Task Force in shaping policy, standards, and other essential support functions, and a Nordic case study involving the governments of Sweden and Finland and centred around the private-sector firm Novatron. 

COP30 runs from 10 to 21 November. See all information here.

--On the fusion panel are (left to right): Laban Coblentz, ITER Head of Communication; Olov Hemström, Head of Strategic Projects at Business Sweden; Caroline Anderson, Director of External Affairs for the Fusion Industry Association; Mikhail Chudakov, IAEA Deputy Director General; and Rebecca Tremain, UK Director of the Clean Air Task Force.

The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) and the ITER Organization have announced they will be hosting a session of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Lise Meitner program in 2026 in Cadarache.

The program, named after the Austrian-Swedish physicist who was renowned internationally for her work on nuclear fission, aims to enhance the participation of women in the nuclear sector by providing early- and mid‑career women professionals with opportunities to participate in a multi-week visiting professional program and advance their technical and soft skills. 

Around fifteen participants from IAEA member states will be welcomed for two weeks for training sessions, workshops, and conferences led by experts from ITER, the CEA, and the IAEA. They will also have the opportunity to tour state-of-the-art research facilities at both ITER and the CEA, allowing them to discover the latest technological advancements and gain a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities associated with managing large-scale projects in the nuclear energy sector.

See the press release in English and in French.

-- IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi, CEA Chairman Anne-Isabelle Etienvre, and ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi announce the news at ITER on 13 November.

ITER Scientist Fellow Livia Casali has been named winner of the Katherine E. Weimar Award by the American Physical Society (APS) "for outstanding scientific contributions to plasma boundary physics and core-edge integration through innovative experiments and modelling supporting the operation of high-performance core plasmas, and for exemplary leadership."

A professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville (USA), Casali also contributes her knowledge and expertise as part of the ITER Scientist Fellow network and has participated in the recent updating of the ITER Research Plan as an international expert. Her work focuses on boundary physics and core-edge integrated solutions with special emphasis on the role of the radiative divertor, divertor detachment, pedestal fuelling, impurity behaviour and negative triangularity. 

The Katherine E. Weimar Award is presented every two years to a woman scientist who has made outstanding contributions to the field of plasma physics.

See the original article on the University of Tennessee Knoxville website.
See more about the Katherine E. Weimar Award here.
--Photo courtesy of the University of Tennessee Knoxville

A panel discussion on recent international developments in fusion, public/private partnerships, and the fusion supply chain is planned during the first week of the COP30 Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil. "Fusion Energy as a Clean Energy Solution" will take place on Wednesday 12 November (16:00-17:30) at the IAEA Pavilion PV-C111 (Blue Zone, Corridor C).

Head of ITER Communication Laban Coblentz will be joined by Mikhail Chudakov, IAEA Deputy Director General; Caroline Anderson, Director of External Affairs for the Fusion Industry Association; Rebecca Tremain, UK Director of the Clean Air Task Force; and Olov Hemström, Head of Strategic Projects at Business Sweden.

The 2025 UN Climate Change Conference runs from 10 to 21 November. See all information here.

In a statement published on 31 October 2025, the Energy and Environment Ministers of G7 nations (France, the United States, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Germany) stress the need for "enhancing global energy security and meeting rising energy demands—including those driven by electrification, digitalization, and artificial intelligence."

The statement describes nuclear energy as a non-emitting baseload energy source consistent with national priorities and international commitments, citing both nuclear fission and nuclear fusion.

"We recognize that, in the future, fusion energy has the potential to make a significant contribution to meeting the growing demand for energy. Acknowledging global advancements and investment in fusion energy technology, we underscore the importance of sustained international collaboration on fusion energy with trusted partners, encouraging private investments and public engagement." The group emphasizes the sharing of best practices, the harmonization of standards, and consistent approaches to fusion regulation as critical to the deployment of fusion energy technologies.

See the full statement that was delivered after the G7 Energy and Environment Ministers’ Meeting in Toronto, Canada (30-31 October 2025).