Russian-manufactured technology is behind a purpose-designed test bench that will verify that ITER port plugs respect all specifications before they are installed on the machine. A key piece of equipment arrived this week. At a gathering on 17 November, stakeholders marked the arrival of the first vacuum test tank from Russia—a component that is crucial to beginning port plug testing in 2026.“The first test bench of the ITER port plug test facility—with the vacuum test tank delivered today at its centre—is a tool that will allow us to test the 16 diagnostic port plugs that we need for the first operational phase at ITER,” said Victor Udintsev, who leads ITER’s Diagnostics Program. “We are expecting to learn a lot—how our planned processes work in reality, how sound our schedule is, and how reliably the test systems work.” The Russian visitors were given a tour of the Tokamak Building as part of the day's events. From left to right: Igor Noskov (counsellor to the Russian Embassy in Paris), Anatoly Krasilnikov (head of the Russian Domestic Agency), Stanislav Oransky (Russian Consul General in Marseille), and Alexander Alekseev (deputy head of Science & Integration at ITER). ITER’s port plug test facility will begin operating with one test bench before expanding in the coming years to three*, in order to handle the concurrent testing of port plugs housing not only diagnostics, but also heating, fuelling, and tritium test system components. A port plug test bench is a complete system, with heating, vacuum, handling, and control systems all organized around the central vacuum tank. Once ITER port plugs are equipped with their tenant systems, they undergo a series of performance tests. One set of tests uses thermal cycling at high vacuum to measure the outgassing rates coming from the port plug assemblies and make sure the vacuum is protected as temperature and pressure are applied. Tests will also be performed to verify that the cooling circuits can handle both high pressure and pressure drops."Our job is to provide the testing facilities that can be used to make sure the port plugs stand up to the challenges they will find in the ITER reactor," says Olesya Solovyeva, director of the ITER project at Russian test stand manufacturer GKMP. "Very few applications have this combination of thermal cycling, high vacuum and nuclear requirements." (See a video produced by GKMP in Russian, with English subtitles, below.) All around the vacuum vessel, ports at three levels allow access for the installation, replacement or repair of in-vessel components. During operation, these openings will be sealed by large stainless-steel plugs weighing up to 48 tonnes.Port plugs have a dual function—they carry, but also protect, critical systems that must operate near the plasma. These include diagnostic instruments providing real-time data for plasma control, as well as heating, fuelling, and vacuum-pumping systems that require unobstructed access to the chamber.Port plugs also seal the port openings, allowing high vacuum to be maintained within the vacuum vessel.  Ceremony guests on 17 November included Russian Consul General in Marseille Stanislav Oransky, Counsellor to the Russian Embassy Igor Noskov, Korean Domestic Agency Director Kijung Jung, Head of the ITER Construction Project Sergio Orlandi, Deputy Head of the Science Division Alexander Alekseev, as well as representatives from GKMP and Rosatom. A dozen members of the Russian media were on site to cover the ceremony.“This test facility is one of the most complex and technologically advanced systems within our area of responsibility in the project,” said Anatoly Krasilnikov, head of ITER Russia. “For design and fabrication, our key suppliers had to develop and implement cutting-edge innovative solutions.” Every ITER Member is providing tenant diagnostic systems that will be mounted on port plugs, and thus has a stake in the port plug test facility. KR Sriram (head of the Office of the Director-General) stands in front of the recently delivered test tank with Kijung Jung, head of the Korean Domestic Agency, and Sergio Orlandi, head of the ITER Construction Project. Testing on the first port plug—upper port plug #4—will begin next year. “With the arrival of the first test vessel, we can say that we have received the first significant delivery in the scope of the diagnostics integration program,” Udintsev concluded. *A fourth test stand is planned to be delivered to Fusion for Energy, the European Domestic Agency, for the testing of the port plugs under its responsibility.

The IAEA Director General hails ITER as a steadying force in complex times. Amid the effervescence of the private-sector fusion boom and the uncertainty of the global political climate, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi is urging ITER to continue to serve as a harmonizing element in the fusion world.“There is a risk that fusion moves away from a cooperative phase into a geostrategic competition phase and this is something that must be avoided at all costs,” he said during an interview with Newsline. “We need the beauty of international cooperation that is at the heart of the ITER project.” From left to right: Takayoshi Omae, head of the ITER Construction Project Office; KR Sriram, head of the ITER Office of the Director-General; Toshio Kaneko, special assistant to the IAEA Director General; DeLeah Lockridge, head of ITER's Department of Engineering Services; Sergio Orlandi, head of the ITER Construction Project; Rafael Grossi, IAEA Director General; Pietro Barabaschi, ITER Director-General; Massimo Garribba, Chair of the ITER Council Chair, European Deputy DG ENER; Anne-Isabelle Etienvre, Chairman of the CEA; Jean-Louis Falconi, CEA director of international relations; Laetitia Grammatico, head of the ITER Administration Department; Matteo Barbarino, IAEA fusion expert; Diego Candano Laris, advisor to the IAEA Director General; Sayed Ashraf, scientific adviser to the IAEA Director General; and Katja Rauhansalo, ITER Council Secretary. Director General Grossi made these comments on a visit to ITER on 13 November that included meetings with ITER Director-General Pietro Barbaschi, a tour of tokamak assembly, a talk to ITER staff, and an announcement that ITER and the neighboring CEA research centre will be hosting a session in 2026 of the IAEA Lise Meitner program (see box below). â€œThis visit is something that I have been really wanting to do for a long time and I can tell you, I haven’t been disappointed,” said Director General Grossi. â€œOn the contrary, what I see here is a real turnaround that coincides with a special moment for fusion.”  ITER and CEA to host the IAEA Lise Meitner program for women in nuclear IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi’s visit to ITER was the occasion to champion women in the nuclear sector with the announcement that ITER and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) will host the first European edition of the Lise Meitner program.The Lise Meitner program, launched by the IAEA in 2023, aims to develop the technical and managerial skills of women in nuclear science. In 2026, around 15 mid-career women will be welcomed to ITER and Cadarache for two weeks of training, workshops, and conferences led by top nuclear experts.The program is named after Lise Meitner (1878-1968), who worked with her nephew Otto Robert Frisch to provide the theoretical basis for understanding the process of nuclear fission. She also worked on radioactivity alongside Otto Hahn, yet Hahn alone received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their joint work in 1944. She was, however, widely respected by her peers, and Albert Einstein called her our “Marie Curie.”When making the official announcement in the ITER auditorium alongside Director General Grossi and ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi, Anne-Isabelle Etienvre, the Chairman of the CEA, said, “This program sends an important message to young women: that of daring to envision careers in the nuclear field.”  Director General Grossi applauded ITER for having successfully navigated the technical problems that led to the adoption of the new baseline and said international organizations like ITER and the IAEA must thrive in the context of the “polarity between conflict and cooperation that is inherent to humanity.” The IAEA has played a historic role in the ITER project—one that Director General Grossi likened to “being a midwife.” With the immense flow of investment into fusion and the rapid rise in the number of private-sector fusion companies, he says that ITER has an important function in providing concrete scientific and engineering expertise and in facilitating dialogue between the different approaches to solving the fusion puzzle. “ITER infrastructure, and what it’s going to allow in terms of discovery and demonstration as we move on to fusion energy production, is unique!” IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi and CEA Chairman Anne-Isabelle Etienvre listen to the ITER Director-General's explanations inside the tokamak pit.

Working around the clock over the past few months to complete a series of preparatory activities on vacuum vessel sector #4 has paid off. The sector will be ready to move into the Assembly Hall as soon as a place in tooling becomes available later this month. In approximately one week, vacuum vessel sector module #5 will be transferred into the tokamak pit, leaving one of the sector sub-assembly tools in the Assembly Hall without a "client." Not for long, though. The SIMANN consortium, tasked by the ITER Organization with repairing the bevel (joint) regions of the vacuum vessel sectors, has been timing its work on sector #4—the next in the sequence—to coincide so downtime for the assembly tools could be minimized.When sector #4 was delivered by the European Domestic Agency in May, one set of bevel joints had been repaired (those on the exposed side) but not the other. The sector had to be rotated in an outdoor operation before the contractors could access the second side and bring the bevel non-conformities back to specification to within tolerances of only +/-0.1 millimetres. With that accomplished, two other tasks remained: the welding of outer shell "bosses" (small studs that can be used to attach components), and the installation of diagnostic equipment such as sensors and cables.Working in three shifts, the SIMANN team met the tight deadline, and sector #4 is now wrapped and ready for transfer to the Assembly Hall. 

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 ITER International School is designed to prepare young scientists and engineers for careers in nuclear fusion and in research areas connected to the ITER project. Its “school” format reflects the need to train future professionals across a broad range of interdisciplinary subjects, providing them with the comprehensive knowledge and skills required to contribute effectively to the success of ITER.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.

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.

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.

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