After decades of design, qualification and manufacturing, the ITER divertor is entering a new phase: integration. At the divertor integration facility in Qinshan, China, preparations are complete. The clean room is operational, air filtration systems are running, and divertor components in various stages of unpacking are spread across the polished floor.For now, the elements visible in the workshop are prototypes that will be used to test processes and tools during the first practice integration activities later this year. But alongside the prototypes, production components are already arriving from suppliers around the world, as years of development and manufacturing give way to a new chapter for the ITER divertor program—integration.ITER engineer Laurent Ferrand, who has been involved with the ITER divertor program for nearly 20 years, calls this “an exciting phase ahead.” â€œWe are turning our sights to the assembly and integration of components that have up to now been the focus of individual development programs. That allows us to start the countdown to the installation of the divertor in the ITER machine. It really does feel like a new phase.”Following a global tender, the ITER Organization concluded a contract for divertor integration in December 2024 with a consortium led by the Southwestern Institute of Physics (SWIP)¹. Dedicated facilities—including a warehouse, a workshop, and a clean room—were officially inaugurated in May in the presence of divertor team members from the ITER Organization and representatives of the Domestic Agencies responsible for divertor manufacturing—Europe (cassette bodies and inner vertical targets), Japan (outer vertical targets), and Russia (dome). (See the graphic below.)  The ITER divertor is the component at the bottom of the plasma chamber that withstands the highest surface heat loads of the machine. Its role is twofold: to safely remove heat from the plasma-facing components and to exhaust impurities and helium "ash" that would otherwise cool the plasma and degrade its performance. Variations in the design of divertor cassette assemblies will be one of the main challenges of integration, according to Ferrand. Not only does every cassette host three plasma-facing targets, but there are also diagnostic systems and operational instrumentation to be integrated.“It’s not an exaggeration to state that no two divertor cassettes are exactly alike,” he says. “We can group the 58 divertor cassettes (54 for the machine and 4 spares) into three broad categories—those hosting diagnostics, standard cassettes, or one of two 'lower vertical neutron camera' cassettes with a unique design. But even within these groupings there are variations related to cooling pipe connections or the exact layout of diagnostics or instrumentation. That creates a lot of challenges for the integration team.” Each divertor cassette also has its own specific position at the bottom of the ITER vacuum vessel and cannot be interchanged, meaning that any delay with a cassette assembly will reverberate through the divertor installation schedule at ITER.One of the tasks underway now, before integration activities begin, is to design, procure, and qualify the bespoke tools that will be needed for divertor integration— robotic lifting equipment capable of positioning targets with extreme accuracy, custom swaging systems for mechanical attachment, and purpose-built welding equipment. (“Swaging” is a technique for joining two components without heat or cutting by pulling conically shaped elements through bore holes.) A functional test is underway on the “knuckle” of a prototype cassette body. While the team focuses this year on prototype assembly, the first series production elements are beginning to arrive. Two outer vertical targets have been delivered by Japan, and the first dome, inner vertical target and cassette body elements are expected late this year or early 2027. When integration activities are fully underway, the 1,400 m² clean room will host two production lines. Ferrand will work with ITER teammates Ruth García Vilela and Peng Liu to carefully liaise with the team in Qinshan, and also ensure that the different components needed for divertor integration are at the integration site when needed.During the inauguration last month, the prototype divertor elements were unpacked in the presence of the manufacturing Domestic Agencies and a first set of dimensional, functional and visual examination tests was carried out. â€œThe gathering in May was an opportunity to recognize the result of the long-running efforts by three Domestic Agencies to develop their supply chain and to qualify their technologies and manufacturing processes,” said Ferrand. “Spirits are running high as the next stage of divertor preparation is materializing in parallel to series production.” Prototype assembly will begin later this year, with series integration following in 2027—the point at which components developed and manufactured around the world finally begin to take shape as complete ITER divertor cassettes.¹Consortium members include the China Nuclear Power Engineering (CNPE) Co. Ltd. and the China Nuclear Industry 23 Construction Co. Ltd. (CNI23). Divertor integration and factory acceptance testing is taking place at a CNI23 site in Qinshan, China.   At the facility opening last month, divertor team members from the ITER Organization and representatives from the divertor-manufacturing Domestic Agencies joined SWIP consortium members for a group photo. ITER’s Laurent Ferrand is sixth from left.

Vacuum vessel assembly is continuing ahead of schedule at ITER, as one of the most complex activities of machine assembly is showing the benefits of experience, coordination, and continuous process improvement. Among the teams contributing to this progress is the CNPE Consortium, whose role in machine assembly has expanded over time. In the days leading up to the start of the Chinese New Year in February 2026, a ceremony was held to mark another successful sector module transfer to the tokamak pit. Project leaders, engineers, technicians, and contractors from across the ITER ecosystem were jubilant: after delays accumulated earlier in the decade due to the pandemic and then the repair of key components, vacuum vessel assembly was not just back on track, it was ahead of schedule.  Amid the hum of conversation, ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi, Head of the Construction Project Sergio Orlandi, and Machine Assembly Program Manager Jens Reich took a moment to highlight the contribution of the CNPE Consortium, one of the industrial teams supporting machine assembly activities.“It is fitting that we are about to start the Year of the Fire Horse,” Jens Reich told the assembled crowd. “In the Chinese zodiac, the horse is associated with moving forward and rapid progress and this is something we have been able to achieve together at ITER with the support of the CNPE Consortium.” As part of the CNPE Consortium, France's Framatome focuses on quality assurance and regulatory oversight. Here, members of Framatome team can be seen in front of a nearly completed sector module that is scheduled to be transferred to the tokamak pit in July. The CNPE Consortium became part of the ITER machine assembly project in 2019 when it signed the TAC1 machine assembly contract, with responsibility for installing major components such as the cryostat and the magnets. At the time, the international consortium was composed of four partners from China (China Nuclear Power Engineering Co., China Nuclear Industry 23 Construction Company, the Southwestern Institute of Physics, and the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences) and one from France (Framatome). Since that contract kicked off, the consortium’s scope and impact have continuously expanded. The consortium is now also responsible for sector module sub-assembly, sector module assembly in the pit (excluding welding), and the pre-welding positioning and preparation of the sectors in the pit. In parallel, its presence has grown from 90 to 220 people on site and it has added new industrial partners along the way, such as the Italian industrial firm SIMIC.“I think we have arrived at this point because of our strong track record,” says Tai Jiang, the outgoing head of the CNPE Consortium. “I credit two main factors. The first is the support of ITER’s management, because we depend on engineering, procurement, equipment supply, problem-solving, and rapid decision-making. The second is that our consortium brings together a strong team with complementary expertise, ranging from nuclear construction and equipment assembly to fusion expertise and a deep understanding of the French regulatory and industrial context.” Tai Jiang, the outgoing head of the CNPE Consortium, says they adopted a "Three Ones" principle to adapt to the different cultures and ways of working: one goal, one team, one voice. The consortium has played a significant role in efforts to optimize the sector module assembly process. When the team took over module assembly through a contract signed in February 2024, it was able to review past experience and use lessons learned to improve systems for everything from document management to adding diagnostic attachments to the outer and inner surfaces of the sectors.“We optimized the critical path activities as much as possible and performed much more work in parallel rather than sequentially. This allowed us to shorten the overall duration significantly,” says Wang Peng, the Deputy Project Manager of the CNPE Consortium who oversaw the sector-sub assembly contract for the first two years. Indeed, while it took 7.4 months for the consortium to complete its first module—from the arrival of the sector in tooling to its landing the tokamak pit—that process is now down to 5.5 months. Machine assembly requires meticulous coordination between ITER and contractors: here, ITER's Mathieu Demeyere (centre) discusses the final details of a sector module landing with Philippe Piluso (SIMIC) and Gael Hardy (Framatome). As assembly efficiencies have improved, the expected date for transferring the final sector module into the pit has been advanced from December 2027 to June 2027. “This is a very good accomplishment because these extra six months create flexibility for the overall baseline and will serve as a margin to deal with any future technical challenges,” explains Jens Reich.Lessons learned are also creating a virtuous cycle as the CNPE Consortium becomes involved in other parts of ITER machine assembly. The core team has now been with the project for nearly seven years, accumulating both technical expertise and project knowledge. For Framatome, which focuses primarily on health, safety, environmental oversight, and quality assurance, this continuity is one of the keys to success.“We have been able to apply that acquired knowledge and experience to all our activities at ITER,” says John-Morgan Coulet, Framatome’s project leader for ITER. “Keeping the same teams together and evolving together is important when dealing with such a long-term project.”This continuity will be essential moving forward. After the last sector module lands in the pit in 2027, other critical benchmarks await the CNPE Consortium such as the continued load transfer of vacuum vessels and the pre-compression of the toroidal field coils. Even when the Year of the Horse comes to an end, tokamak assembly will continue at a full gallop.  One important factor in the optimization of sector module assembly is the efficient welding of thousands of instrumentation and diagnostic attachments on the inner and outer shells of the vacuum vessel sectors. The CNPE Consortium's welding team is shown here marking the final weld on sector module #4 before it was lifted into the tokamak pit in May 2026.

The agreement provides for scientific exchange, the implementation of joint research programs, and the training of early career professionals. In early June, ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi was once again in Russia for an official visit. His visit program started off with participation in the 29th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF 2026), where he spoke at a session titled "Megascience Facilities: The New Physics of International Cooperation" that was moderated by Kurchatov Institute President Mikhail Kovalchuk.The visit also included the signing of an agreement on academic, scientific, and technical cooperation between ITER and the Kurchatov Institute, which provides specifically for the exchange of scientific information, the implementation of joint research programs, the training of young scientists and engineers, and the joint supervision of doctoral research.The Kurchatov Institute occupies a special place in the history of fusion research. It was there that the world's first tokamak was assembled in 1954 and where, a few years later, the term "tokamak" was coined. Kurchatov physicists Leonid Artsimovich, Igor Golovin, Natan Yavlinsky, Evgeny Velikhov, Vladimir Mukhovatov, and their colleagues played a pivotal role in the development of tokamak physics and in shaping the ITER project from its earliest stages. And as procurement packages were signed with the ITER Organization for the components that would make up the ITER machine, the Institute contributed to the development of numerous systems, including toroidal field conductors, vacuum vessel upper ports and the divertor dome, gyrotron heating systems, and diagnostics. Today, the Kurchatov is one of the leading research institutions in Russia in the field of nuclear energy.The Director-General's visit to Russia concluded with a lecture on the ITER project, followed by a ceremony at which he was awarded the title of Honorary Doctor of the Kurchatov Institute. At the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum, Director-General Barabaschi participates in a panel on megascience and international cooperation.

The experiment team at the joint Japan/Europe international fusion experiment JT-60SA in Naka, Japan, is organizing an onsite training week from 14 to 18 September 2026 in advance of its OP2 operational campaign. Participation in this training is necessary for those interested in participating in JT-60SA control room or operator roles as trainees during this campaign.The training week will feature lectures about different aspects of operation such as the characteristics of magnets and sub-systems, plasma initiation, real-time control implementation, control room roles and decision flow, experiment implementation, diagnostics, and management. Practical lectures on the use of the human-machine interface (HMI)—the tool used at JT-60SA to prepare for discharges—are also planned.The call for participation is addressed to members of European scientific institutions/universities involved in EURATOM or members of the Japanese fusion research program and agreed collaborators. Applications from other researchers may be considered on an individual basis depending on their institution’s agreement with the JT-60SA project. Participants must have previous experience in some aspects of operation (diagnostics or sub-system operations, operations leader, session leader).The deadline to apply is 3 July 2026. See all information on the JT-60SA website.