ITER has opened formal registration for the second Private Sector Fusion Workshop, to be hosted at the ITER site in Provence on 22-23 April 2025. As with the first workshop in May 2024, this forum is designed to serve the priorities of private sector fusion initiatives globally, and to facilitate public-private knowledge transfer and collaboration. But the target this year will be different, focused mainly on “who is doing what” to address the primary remaining challenges of fusion R&D. And in particular, this year’s Workshop will be tightly sequenced with the ITER Business Forum (IBF/25), a fusion supply chain event in Marseille starting on the evening of 23 April. This will lead to a four-day period (Tuesday-Friday) packed with activity, but also rich with value. Last year’s workshop created a sort of private sector status report, focused on understanding—from a technology perspective—who has achieved what, and how ITER can help. The workshop outcomes shaped ITER’s Private Sector Fusion Engagement Project, launched in November 2024.This second workshop will serve three specific objectives: (1) to help private sector fusion companies to take advantage of ITER’s new mechanisms for knowledge-sharing and collaboration; (2) to understand the latest and most promising approaches to solving fusion technology’s remaining challenges (e.g., steady-state operation, new structural and functional materials, solutions for heat removal and heat exhaust, and fuel cycle issues) as well as other relevant innovations; and (3) to highlight the existing capacities of the global fusion supply chain. It is in relation to the third objective that the ITER Business Forum, hosted by Agence Iter France, will be especially useful, as historically more than 1,000 people converge for presentations, B2B meetings, and an exhibition featuring supplier companies.Visit the Workshop website for more information on the program, as well for clarity on how to attend both events and how to get the most out of each. All interested parties are welcome, but as with last year, priority will be given to participation by private sector fusion initiatives. Questions can be addressed to the PSFE Help Desk (@email). We look forward to welcoming you at ITER!

Since December 2023, this 440-tonne vacuum vessel sector had been under another roof as repairs for dimensional non-conformities were planned and then executed on one side of the component. Last week, it was moved back to the Assembly Hall for a series of handling operations that, once completed, will allow operations to continue on its second side. On Friday 7 February the double doors of the Assembly Hall opened to allow a sleeping giant to enter. Lying horizontally on its frame, vacuum vessel sector #8 had been transported just a few hundred metres from the former Cryostat Workshop by self-propelled modular transporter (SPMT).Like sectors #6 and #7, some parts of the geometry of this sector—the bevel regions, where the sector is joined through welding to two others—needed to be rectified to ensure that automated in-pit welding tools will work as expected. With only two sector sub-assembly tools available in the Assembly Hall, the decision was made to repair sector #8 in a horizontal position, working first on one side and then on the other. From July to December 2024, the repair team rectified the bevel area on the exposed side (which will connect to sector #7 as the plasma chamber takes shape in the tokamak pit) by using automated and manual metal fill-in and machining. In order to start on the second side, a series of handling operations are scheduled this month. Sector #8 arrives on its transport frame at the Cleaning Facility—an antechamber to the Assembly Hall. When it leaves again, its other side will be exposed. In the Assembly Hall, the upending tool will be used to turn the sector to vertical, where it can be lifted by the overhead bridge cranes and brought into the tokamak pit. From there, sector #8 needs to be rotated 180 degrees so that when it returns to the upending tool it is facing the opposite direction. When sector #8 is "downended" and returned to horizontal, the opposite side will be exposed and the component can be returned to the Cryostat Workshop for the continuation of repair activities.Of the three vacuum vessel sectors that were the initial focus of repairs, sector #7 was the first to be completed last September. It will also be the first to be lowered into the tokamak pit as a "sector module," meaning that it has been assembled with its thermal shield and two toroidal field coils. That operation is expected in April.

In the past weeks, two superconducting tokamaks—EAST in China and WEST in France—have announced new performance records. What relevance to ITER? On 20 January, EAST plasma shot #150425 became the first to break the barrier of 1,000 seconds in steady-state high-confinement mode operating with a W divertor and lithium injection. Maintaining plasma operation at these conditions for 1,066 seconds at a temperature of nearly 70 million °C represents a significant milestone for the EAST team, which has improved the device’s auxiliary heating, diagnostics and plasma control systems over time to increase performance. The record builds on two prior milestones—the achievement of 100 seconds in 2017 and 403 seconds in 2023.At WEST—which also operates with a tungsten divertor to help prepare for ITER operation—discharge #60947 was maintained for 824 seconds*—approximately double the duration and the ratio of energy injected/extracted compared to the record of the device when it operated with a carbon limiter (former Tore Supra tokamak). This builds on a former record last year of 364 seconds. Le tokamak WEST (W (tungstène) Environment in Steady-state Tokamak) se trouve au CEA de Cadarache, à proximité d’ITER. L’équipe a obtenu d’excellents résultats lors de sa dernière campagne, notamment un nouveau record de durée du plasma. Successful operation of tokamaks with very long pulses, in the range of those foreseen in ITER, demonstrates that our knowledge to control high temperature plasmas is mature, according to Alberto Loarte, head of the ITER Science Division. “Successful long-pulse tokamak operation requires a high degree of integration and control to ensure that neither physics processes nor technological limitations limit the pulse duration," he explains. "Important issues in this respect are: the control of the magnetic field configuration, since sensors signals may drift over long timescales and the profile of the plasma current relaxes in these timescales and can become unstable; maintaining good power exhaust from the plasma-facing components by water cooling leading to a constant component temperature; and avoiding the contamination of the plasma by tungsten that can terminate it due to excessive radiation losses. While not all the systems used in EAST and WEST to demonstrate long-pulse tokamak operation are included in the ITER baseline, their experience is very valuable for us to identify where the key issues are, in practice, so that we can tackle them with our systems.”These achievements at EAST and WEST add to the broad body of work carried out by tokamak teams around the globe who are working to address key physics and technology issues for ITER, in particular those linked to the new baseline, and to test advanced scenarios for the nuclear fusion reactors of the future.*Editor's note: WEST set a new record for plasma duration (1337 seconds) on 12 February 2025. See this report.

On site at ITER in December 2024, Jan Hosan went looking for the human in the technological. As a commercial photographer who specializes in technological, industrial and scientific subjects, he says he looks to brings out the "aesthetical and the exciting" in each frame, while remaining true to the subject's function. At ITER he captured the scale and complexity of the undertaking but also—by including people at work in the shadow of giant components—the very human story.You can scroll through his ITER portfolio here, or contact him here.