What’s New

Fusion Power Associates (FPA), the US-based non-profit that has been advocating for the development of fusion energy since its founding in 1979, is making a few changes. 

In a letter to FPA members and the broader fusion community, the organization announced that its longtime president and co-founder Stephen O. Dean would be transitioning to the role of President Emeritus and that the organization would be moving from the Washington DC area to be hosted by the University of California San Diego (UC San Diego). Michael Campbell and Farhat Beg, respectively Professor of Practice and Professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at the university, will be taking over as Fusion Power Associates President and Senior Vice President.

Recent developments are contributing to a growing fusion ecosystem in the San Diego area. General Atomics, which operates the DIII-D tokamak for the US Department of Energy and also fabricates target assemblies for inertial fusion, is located just north of the city. (See the story on the completion at General Atomics of the ITER central solenoid is this issue of the ITER Newsline.) The company announced in March that it was collaborating with UCSD on a Fusion Data Science and Digital Engineering Center as part of efforts to fast-track fusion energy development; it is also part of a new research collaborative focused on developing and scaling up inertial fusion power facilities. And at UCSD, a Fusion Engineering Institute was launched last year to focus on some of the engineering challenges that must be addressed for commercially attractive fusion. With a large San Diego delegation planning to visit ITER later this month, we expect to hear more about emerging plans to position San Diego as a fusion R&D hub.

The 2024 ITER Organization Report on Human Resources has just been published.

Follow this link to browse through the report, which offers insight into the human dimension of the ITER Organization through statistics on staffing trends, recruitment, mobility, development, performance, remuneration, and more. It also highlights the growing diversity of the organization—both in terms of professional roles and also in terms of the backgrounds and profiles of ITER staff and their families, who come from more than 30 countries.

To learn even more about what it is like to work at the ITER Organization, see this selection of staff stories. 

See all ITER Organization reports on the Publications page of the website.