World Expo 2025

ITER celebrates Fusion Energy Day in Osaka

15 Jul 2025 - Sabina Griffith, ITER Communication

Since April this year, the ITER Organization has been exhibiting at the World EXPO in Osaka, Japan—and with great success, as reflected by the tens of thousands of visitors received at the stand. (Organizers have recorded an average of 100,000 daily visitors to the EXPO.) On Sunday 13 July the ITER project took centre stage by inviting representatives from the Japanese government, Japanese fusion institutions, Japanese industry, EXPO organizers, ITER Members, and the general public to join in for a celebration of “Fusion Energy Day.”

At the opening of Fusion Energy Day on 13 July, ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi was joined on stage by senior dignitaries from the Japanese Government, representatives of ITER Member states, industry leaders, and delegates from fusion associations.

The day devoted to the energy of the Sun and stars began with an emotional moment: the hoisting of the Japanese flag next to the ITER flag, accompanied by the national anthem of Japan and—something brand new—the anthem of the ITER project that had been created especially for the occasion by well-known Japanese composer Shigeaki Saegusa. “If ITER is put to practical use, it will be one of the greatest inventions in human history,” he later stated at a reception where he handed over the musical score to ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi.

ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi informs the audience about the status of ITER and the potential of fusion energy.

During the 40-minute presentation that followed the opening ceremony, Director-General Barabaschi explained the principles of fusion and how ITER is aiming to demonstrate that fusion energy can be generated on an industrial scale. The official delegation then continued on to a guided tour of the ITER exhibition—one that included a virtual reality headset that transported delegates to the ITER site—while the Fusion Energy Day lectures continued on stage with a line-up of speakers who presented ITER career opportunities, the principles of fusion in Japanese, and the status of the largest currently operating tokamak—the Europe/Japan tokamak JT-60SA. Representatives of the private Japanese fusion association J-Fusion and the European consortium EUROfusion also made presentations to the audience.

Fusion Energy Day concluded with a live show that interpreted fusion and the power of the elements through light and sound. And as the brutally hot Sun was finally setting over Osaka, the delegation had one more opportunity to listen to the composer’s words in the anthem created for the ITER project. “ITER is our Sun, created by humanity for the first time in history by gathering our collective wisdom and power.”

The ITER Organization would like to thank the Japanese Government and the National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology (QST) for their generous financial and logistical assistance.

View other images from Fusion Energy Day in the gallery below. (Thanks to Tamás Szabolics from EUROfusion for his contribution.)

Yoko Kamikawa, Japan's former Minister of Foreign Affairs, at the ITER stand.

Fusion Energy Day opens with a presentation by Pietro Barabaschi, ITER Director-General.

Kiuchi Minoru, Japanese Minister in charge of Economic Security, greets the participants to Fusion Energy Day on behalf of the Japanese Government.

Travelling to ITER ... virtually.

The delegation arrives at the ITER stand. In the centre is Takayoshi Omae, head of the ITER Construction Project Office.

Yutaka Kamada, ITER Deputy Director-General for Science & Technology.

Carlos Alejaldre served as Deputy Director-General of the ITER Organization in charge of Safety and Security. He now chairs the Governing Board of Fusion for Energy, the supervisory body overseeing Europe’s contribution to ITER and to broader fusion energy development. He is also Emeritus Scientist at CIEMAT, one of Spain's leading public research institutions in energy and environmental technologies.